Close your eyes, think of a time where the woman's main priority was to look after her husband, the children, make more children, and look perfect twenty-four/seven. This wasn't a century ago, this was just fifty years ago, in the mid nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties. World war two had recently ended, and the population had just seen an immense decrease, so what was a woman to do? Procreate of course! It was the only thing a woman could do to help our nation! When discussing this topic with a teacher I was told that when she had her first child and her husband was coming to see her, all her mother could tell her to do was to "go and fix your hair and put some make-up on" this may seem ridiculous but it's true. Beauty idols were not only beautiful, they were flawless, to call them perfect would not be embellishing the truth. It was these 'super-women' that 'normal' everyday women had to measure up to, but there was one difference. These 'super-women' were working women, they didn't have families and they had people cooking and cleaning for them, not the other way around, or was this image of being a super woman the face they showed the public, an illusion? It was all about presentation and presence…so they of course had to give the impression of having it 'all together' with an ease that's almost inhuman. Whether an illusion or reality being compared to a superwoman, is an enormous pressure to be placed under when you are an average woman , living an average lifestyle.


Jean Shrimpton, or Shrimpie as she hated to be called, was one of the most famous globally known models of the nineteen-sixties, with flawless skin, stars in her eyes and all round...