 Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and a hundred years changes the eye. 
It's been a while since we checked in with The National Police Gazette, that most venerable of U.S. magazines, launched all the way back in 1845. Today we venture to the year 1919, one of its famed pink issues, with cover star Clarine Seymour. She's described as pretty by the editors, but before you smirk and say beauty standards have really changed in a hundred years, check out the inset photo.  So you see, Gazette's cover doesn't capture Seymour at her best. Yeah. Maybe she still doesn't exactly strike you as a stunner. That's because you were right the first time—beauty standards have changed in a hundred years. For both women and men. They've diversified, too, in ways that would shock Gazette readers of 1919. Seymour would maybe today be more a cute best friend type than a leading lady. However, before she died suddenly in 1920 due to complications following intestinal surgery, she was well on her way to a successful leading career in silent cinema, having appeared in more than twenty features and shorts.
Beauty standards may be different but the human body hasn't changed in a hundred years. A lot of what beauty is has to do with clothing, hair, etc. As proof, we have some nude images from around 1920 that could have been made yesterday. We may post one of those later, just for the fun of it. Elsewhere in the Gazette you get the usual celebs, boxers, and news briefs, all offering a fascinating view onto what the U.S. looked like during the heyday of the pulp era, which according to most scholars began in the last few years of the 19th century. The society, the people, the pulp, and the Gazette would all become more recognizably modern in a few more decades.            
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1953—Hemingway Wins Pulitzer
American author Ernest Hemingway, who had already written such literary classics as The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls, is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novella The Old Man and the Sea, the story of an aging Cuban fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. 1970—Mass Shooting at Kent State
In the U.S., Ohio National Guard troops, who had been sent to Kent State University after disturbances in the city of Kent the weekend before, open fire on a group of unarmed students, killing four and wounding nine. Some of the students had been protesting the United States' invasion of Cambodia, but others had been walking nearby or observing from a distance. The incident triggered a mass protest of four million college students nationwide, and eight of the guardsmen were indicted by a grand jury, but charges against all of them were eventually dismissed. 2003—Suzy Parker Dies
American model and actress Suzy Parker, who appeared the films Funny Face and Kiss Them for Me, was the first model to earn more than $100,000 a year, and who was a favorite target of the mid-century tabloids, dies at home in Montecito, California, surrounded by family friends, after electing to discontinue dialysis treatments. 1920—Negro National Baseball League Debuts
The first game of Negro National League baseball is played in Indianapolis, Indiana. The league, one of several that would be formed, was composed of The Chicago American Giants, The Detroit Stars, The Kansas City Monarchs, The Indianapolis ABCs, The St. Louis Giants, The Cuban Stars, The Dayton Marcos, and The Chicago Giants. 1955—Williams Wins Pulitzer
American playwright Tennessee Williams wins the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his controversial play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which tells the story of a southern family in crisis, explicitly deals with alcoholism, and contains a veiled subtext concerning homosexuality in southern society. In 1958 the play becomes a motion picture starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman.
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