Classifying ‘national types of beauty’: from cigarette cards to Miss Universe
(Conversation) – In the early 1900s, international tobacco companies produced cigarette cards both to strengthen soft cigarette packets and to promote their brand. The cards often pictured soldiers, planes, boats or sporting heroes, and smokers were encouraged to collect whole sets. In 1928 Major Drapkin and Co., a tobacco company once based in London, produced a uniquely different set from those described above. A series of 36 exquisitely printed black and white photographs called “National Types of Beauty” portrayed women of various races, who according to the British colonial eye…
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