The Miss Universe competition reflects our changing beauty ideals ' see how the pageant has evolved over 63 years

TheMiss Universe beauty pageant is now 63 years old, and it can tell us a lot about how our perception of beauty has evolved over the years.In a recent study,UK-based Superdrug Online Doctor trackedthe evolution of Miss Universe winners body types since the contest started in 1952 by gatheringall of the publicly available pictures, height, and weight measurements the team could find and then comparingthe datawith the average height and weight of women in the United States aged 20 to 29 (based onCenter for Disease Control data)."We chose to examine Miss Universe because it's such a long-standing tradition around the world,"Adina Antonucci, one of the study's team members, tellsTech Insider in an email. "In recent years, we've seen an increase in body image awareness that has sparked important conversations about the unrealistic standards of beauty."They found thatwhile the average American woman has gotten heavier, Miss Universe has only gotten thinner and taller.Keep scrollingto see how the competition and its winners have evolved over six decades.Miss Universe started in 1952 as a marketing stunt by a California clothing company, Pacific Knitting Mills, after the winner of rival pageant Miss America refused to wear one of its swimsuits.Only 30 contestants competed for the crown. At first, the pageant was combined with the Miss USA pageant. It wasn't broadcast until 1955. Here are some contestants in 1956 at a department store for the bathing suit competition. In those early years, Miss USA was essentially a preliminary phase in the Miss Universe contest. Here's the Miss USA 1957 winner, Leona Gage, who lost to Gladys Zender from Peru in Miss Universe.See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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