Beauty standards through history part 1 : Ancient Maya beautification

We live in a world where we are constantly subjected to different beauty ideals that we have to embody, or risk being and feeling undesirable. These impossible standards seem to change with time periods, and what is equally absurd, people follow the new ones again.
History has proven time and time again that beauty ideals are nothing but a reflection of the society we live in. While researching these most strange beauty standards, I realized two things. Humans were always incredibly vain, but most importantly we were always prepared to go to great lengths to fit in. So to make us all feel a little better about doing obnoxious things to present ourselves as desirable, I decided to make a string of posts in which I present different cultures and their beauty standards.

Here are the ancient Mayans. Remember Mayans? Ancient civilization of human sacrifice, number zero, stone palaces and creepy calendars foretelling doom? These are the attributes you needed to be hip in their society:

Precious teeth

Turns out the Mayans were quite the dentists. Not only did they use precious stones like jade for fillings, but pointed teeth, oh man, that was all the rage back then. The sharper, the sexier.

Nose couture

Have you ever been made fun of because of your Roman nose? Despair no more! In ancient Mayan culture, the hawk nose was the most beautiful of them all. If you were not born with it, well then you just made yourself a fake one.

Crossed eyes

It was most desirable to have crossed eyes. Mothers made an invention to attain it—they secured a stone on the child’s head so it dangled before their eyes.

Elongated head

When babies were born, Mayans put boards on their foreheads and increased pressure through time, so they got long elongated skulls. Because corn to Mayan people was not just food, it was also their god and beauty standard.

In retrospect, I cannot even begin to imagine what Mayans would think about our ideals. Tell me if you have an idea, or if you know about any other strange beauty standards.