Ancient women also advocated good figure. From the beauty of "long body" and "thin waist" in the pre-Qin period to the beauty of "light body" in the Han and Wei dynasties and the beauty of "full body" in the Tang Dynasty, the aesthetic standards in different historical periods are different.

In the pre-Qin period, northern women took "body length" as beauty.

As far as the northern central plains are concerned, in the pre-Qin period, "Shuo" or "Qi" was highly praised. In folk parlance, it is "height" and "length" that is beauty. The representative figure of tall and beautiful women in the pre-Qin period was Wei Zhuanggong's wife Zhuang Jiang. Zhuang Jiang is a princess of Qi. When she got married, the wedding scene was big and beautiful. The poem Shuo Ren in The Book of Songs Feng Wei describes Zhuang Jiang's wedding scene. Zhuang Jiang's figure is mentioned twice in the poem: "Amazing" and "Proud". Shuoren is a tall man, and "qi" and "pride" further emphasize the beauty of Zhuang Jiangmiao's figure. Moreover, Zhuang Jiang is not only slim, but also has beautiful hands, neck, skin, mouth, teeth and eyes: soft hands, skin like jelly, collar like salamander, teeth like rhinoceros, a cicada's head like a moth's eyebrow and so on.

During the Han and Wei Dynasties, women took "lightness" as beauty.

After the Han Dynasty, the standard of women's good figure changed again. Although "long body" and "thin waist" are still appreciated, the aristocratic class prefers tenderness and delicacy-taking "intellectual man fit" as beauty.

According to historical records, the concubines favored in the harem of the Han Dynasty were all light-skinned. For example, Mrs. Qi, the favorite concubine of Emperor Gaozu Liu Bang, has a charming figure and a sense of rhythm. Mrs. Qi can't do this if she is overweight. The woman with the best figure should be Zhao, the queen of Emperor Han Cheng, who is as light as a swallow. The idiom "Yan Guo is thin and fat" refers to Zhao Yanfei. How light is your body? Song Qinchun's Zhao Chuan said: "Zhao has a thin waist and is kind. If a person shivers with a flower branch, others can't learn.

In the Tang Dynasty, "plump" figure was beautiful.

Before the Tang Dynasty, the "thin waist" and "light body" were changed. Women are "plump", but their waists are not taken seriously. The beautiful women in the Tang Dynasty are all rich. For example, in Yan's Travel Map, none of the ladies around Emperor Taizong was thin. The later the time goes, the more plump the ladies in the Tang Dynasty are in painting. The female images in the murals of the prosperous Tang Dynasty discovered by modern archaeology also confirm this point, and they are all plump.

Wonderful beauty in song dynasty.

Song people began to advocate the beauty of elegance. Feminine beauty has changed from gorgeous and open to elegant and introverted. Feminine beauty is generally based on the original appearance of Guanyin Bodhisattva, and people's requirements for beautiful women gradually tend to be tender and delicate: cutting shoulders, flat chest, bending over and slim feet. In the Song Dynasty, the wind of foot-binding spread all over the people, and "three-inch golden lotus" became the basic requirement for female beauty. The jewelry named "Corolla" worn by women in Song Dynasty was very popular and beautifully made, which added charming temperament to women in this era. The cosmetic powder used by women in the Song Dynasty has been made into powder blocks, each with a diameter of about 3 cm, which are round, square, quadrilateral, hexagonal, sunflower petal-shaped and so on. The surface of each powder block is also printed with concave and convex plum, orchid and lotus patterns.

In the Qing Dynasty, the beauty of reservation and restraint was still the basis of female beauty. Juck Zhang, a scholar in Qing Dynasty, also mentioned in A Dream Shadow that the so-called beauty takes flowers as its posture, birds as its sound, the moon as its god, vitamins as its bones, ice and snow as its skin, autumn water as its posture and poetry as its heart. Through vivid metaphors, we can see that a scholar needs both internal and external aesthetic standards. This aesthetic consciousness has been maintained until the Republic of China.