Take the female of our species.  Stretch out an infinite timeline.  Now line every woman up from antiquity until now.  Try to be creative:  push the timeline ahead into the future.  Now note that on one spectrum, a cave-lady and on the other a hyper-evolved peek into the pin ups of the future; and with the time left on our planet, women will look much different than they do now.  Take a long look in your mind at the beauty pageant of all-time . . .  This will be the reality of the future.  Beauty pageants long surpass antiquity.  They will probably continue into that far out future too.  My point is this:

The most beautiful woman circa 10,000 B.C. would probably look nothing like the finest of ’09 (2009), right?  Just as ancient Rome’s Isle of Lesbos would differ much from the cave-dwelling ladies as much as from the females to come.  The standard would become the mean, halfway of course, between the most ancient until the last girl on Earth.  Because the further from the center we choose on our all-time beauty queen timeline, the closer we move toward polar opposites, becoming more exaggerated as the distance waxed.  So one may say: ugly, or pretty is the definition of standard.  Yes, zeitgeist dictates that era’s standard, but the standard is still serving to define beauty.  Here a large mythos is debunked.  Beauty pageants reward only standard —or average to put it bluntly and mathematically.

P.T. Barnum knew that competition drove capital.  Thus, the first American Beauty pageant in 1894; and before pimping, the infamous con-man paraded dogs and birds on stage for cash.  He knew that woman would be easier to control because they spoke English and so he quickly swapped (gulp) bitches and birds, for human girls.

And so, women dream of runways and pageants, meanwhile I read Barnum’s book about getting over on people.  Especially silly it becomes when we note how on our giant timeline–we will all look funny! —except for anyone reading that is.