How This 18th Century Disease Shaped Beauty Standards

“Consumptive chic” used to be the height of fashion

The Common Lot, color lithograph by J. Bouvier, 1842–1865, Wellcome Collection

Throughout history, and in cultures all over the world, beauty ideals have changed numerous times. In particular, for women. In some cases, even symptoms of deadly diseases were considered attractive: think of the heroin chic of the 90s, the Pro-Ana movement glorifying anorexia, or the so-called “consumptive chic” caused by tuberculosis.

Women as deathly thin, delicate, fragile, sickly, and as something to be cared for by men still remain a fashion fetish. But the idea that tuberculosis — a disease that causes coughing up blood and wasting — could enhance its sufferer’s beauty is somewhat strange.

Yet, in Victorian times, it used to be the height of fashion. So how did symptoms of a deadly disease became entwined with feminine ideals?

The ideal, deeply romanticised disease

The scene of Fading Away by Henry Peach Robinson centres on a bedridden young woman dying of tuberculosis, 1858, The Met

Tuberculosis (TB), also known as the White Plague, consumption, phthisis, scrofula, hectic fever, and graveyard cough, has been present and documented since antiquity.

But it only peaked in Western Europe between the years 1750 and 1850, causing around 25 per cent of deaths in Europe. A staggering amount of those deaths were young people.

Because of the belief that tuberculosis was not contagious but inherent and “stemming from person’s innate nature” (which was discovered later in the 19th century not to be true), it was not stigmatised. In fact, it was the opposite — it was called the “ideal disease”.

The tuberculosis symptoms were exponentially preferable to other epidemics and infection that ravaged 18th and 19th-century society. Symptoms of cholera or the plague, characterised by intense diarrhoea, vomiting, or bluish-grey skin, were perceived as ugly and undignified.

Consumption was not an instant killer. You died very, very slowly. A patient could be symptomatic for an extended time, with the mind and external body mainly remaining intact. The only external, visible symptoms were…