7 Interesting Things You Never Knew About Beauty Pageants

Contestants had to measure up against cardboard cut-outs of the ideal body type

In 1935, a beauty pageant in Dallas, Texas, made women pose in their swimsuits inside a wooden cut-out of the ideal female body shape to see how they measured up. Women who fit almost perfectly inside the outline were more likely to proceed to the next round, according to Smithsonian Magazine.

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