Nero's wife — hundreds of lactating donkeys
Nero's second wife bathed daily in donkey milk to eliminate facial wrinkles, requiring hundreds of lactating donkeys to supply the bath.
Snapshot · Fin vs History
Big Botticelli Gyal (with Paddy Young!) | The History of Beauty Standards (Part 1)
Explore episode
Jul 20, 2026
Similar snapshots
'Under the weather' origin
The phrase 'under the weather' originated from sailors putting sick crew in the lower hold to get them out of the weather.
'Cut to the chase' origin
The phrase 'cut to the chase' came from the silent film era, when a director demanded skipping drawn-out romance scenes to get to the chase sequence.
British sailors called 'limeys'
British sailors were called 'limeys' because the Royal Navy issued limes to prevent scurvy caused by vitamin C deficiency on long voyages.
Venus of Willendorf — 30,000 BC
The earliest known female beauty ideal, dating to around 30,000 BC, focused on large hips, thighs, and breasts — reflecting a fertility-based standard rather than aesthetic vanity.
Ancient Egypt — bare fanny begins
Ancient Egyptian beauty standards flipped to thin limbs, no curves, and hairlessness — women used flint scrapers and chemical pastes to remove all body hair, closely resembling modern 2000s aesthetics.
Berber force-feeding — 20L milk + 2kg millet/day
Among the Berber people of Northwest Africa, girls as young as 5 were force-fed up to 20 litres of camel milk and 2 kilos of pounded millet mixed with 2 cups of butter daily — nearly 21,000 calories — because obesity was considered highly desirable.
Medieval ideal — huge forehead, tiny mouth
In medieval Western Europe, the ideal female beauty included the highest possible hairline (plucked back), a tiny mouth, and small hands — effectively the opposite of most modern beauty standards.
Galton's sextant bum measurement — Namibia, 1850s
Francis Galton covertly used a naval sextant to measure the buttocks of indigenous Namibian women from a distance in the 1850s, then walked to the spot to calculate exact proportions using geographical instruments.
Galton's attractiveness map — London best, Aberdeen worst
Francis Galton walked the streets of British cities with an early clicker device, rating women as 'attractive', 'neutral', or 'repellent'. He concluded London was most attractive and Aberdeen most repellent, though he never published the full map.
