Long before women were vying for the title of Miss World, controversial circus owner P.T. Barnum staged the very first beauty contest.
But ladies back then weren’t queueing up to take part and the businessman had to think up clever ways to convince them to get involved.
While contests to decide which men and women were the most attractive of the bunch have been going since as far back as ancient Greece, the first modern and international contest was staged by Barnum, with the public as judges, in June 1855.
In the early 1850s, Barnum, who for a while had record-breaking twins Chang and Eng Bunker in his circus, had come up with the idea.
At his museum in New York City, his national contests between animals like dogs and chickens, flowers and even babies had become a popular staple.
The contestants would be displayed and judged by paying audiences who would crown their favourite the winner.
Barnum, who was portrayed by Hugh Jackman in movie The Greatest Showman, thought it would be a great idea to stage such a contest for women, but he couldn’t convince any to sign up.
The prize, if the woman was single, was a dowry, and if she was married, she’d be given a diamond tiara instead.
But such a meagre reward wasn’t enough to entice respectable ladies of the Victorian era to put themselves up on public display.
That was, at least, until Barnum came up with a clever workaround.
He allowed women to enter the contest by providing a photograph of themselves to be hung in his museum.
Visitors would be invited to peruse the gallery and vote for their favourites – essentially, the modern-day equivalent of getting likes on your Instagram post.
The 10 women whose pictures got the most votes would see their images transformed into specially commissioned oil paintings.
Those paintings would be published in a book called World’s Book of Female Beauty.
This process quickly caught on, and before long, attitudes changed.
Women soon began appearing in advertisements and modelling became a respectable occupation for a lady to have.
Almost 170 years later, and beauty pageants are still hugely popular events staged around the world every single year.
One of the most famous pageants, Miss America, was launched in 1921, over 60 years after Barnum paved the way.
Miss World was first held three decades later in 1951. To this day, it holds the record for longest running TV beauty pageant.
It was Hollywood films like Miss Congeniality, starring Sandra Bullock as an undercover FBI agent, that spread the phenomenon to every corner of the world.
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