Is your face on trend? Style essences in old Hollywood vs. modern Hollywood
Are some style essences more popular than others, appearing more frequently in movies and TV?
This post explores how certain style essences have become more or less represented in actresses’ faces from old Hollywood (1920s-1960s) to current Hollywood.
Step 1: Selecting the celebrities
First, I asked ChatGPT to generate two lists of celebrity names:
1. a list of 20 very famous old Hollywood actresses, and
2. a list of 20 very famous modern Hollywood actresses.
I used ChatGPT to avoid potential bias in which celebrities were selected.
Step 2: Typing the celebrities
Next, I went through the two lists and virtually draped the actresses until I’d verified all their types.
(For many actresses on the lists, I’d verified their types previously, so I didn’t need to retype them.)
Below are the actresses and their style types.
The 20 Famous Old Hollywood Actresses:
Beautiful RCG Audrey
Audrey Hepburn (Romantic Gamine Classic)
Elizabeth Taylor (Romantic Ethereal Classic)
Grace Kelly (Ethereal Natural Classic)
Judy Garland (Romantic Gamine Classic)
Bette Davis (Gamine Ingenue)
Katharine Hepburn (Ethereal Natural Classic)
Ingrid Bergman (Romantic Classic Ingenue)
Rita Hayworth (Romantic Dramatic Natural)
Vivien Leigh (Romantic Dramatic Classic)
Greta Garbo (Romantic Ethereal Dramatic Classic)
Joan Crawford (Ethereal Natural Classic)
Lauren Bacall (Ethereal Natural Dramatic)
Ava Gardner (Romantic Ethereal Dramatic Classic)
Claudette Colbert (Natural Gamine Ingenue)
Jean Harlow (Natural Gamine Ingenue)
Barbara Stanwyck (Ethereal Natural Classic)
Marlene Dietrich (Romantic Ethereal Dramatic)
Lana Turner (Romantic Classic Ingenue)
Deborah Kerr (Ethereal Natural Classic)
The 20 Famous Modern Hollywood Actresses:
Beautiful EDG Zendaya
Meryl Streep (Ethereal Natural)
Julia Roberts (Ethereal Dramatic Gamine)
Sandra Bullock (Romantic Dramatic Classic)
Angelina Jolie (Romantic Ethereal Dramatic Classic)
Jennifer Lawrence (Ethereal Dramatic Gamine)
Scarlett Johansson (Romantic Dramatic Gamine)
Natalie Portman (Romantic Dramatic Gamine)
Charlize Theron (Romantic Ethereal Dramatic)
Cate Blanchett (Ethereal Dramatic Natural)
Emma Stone (Ethereal Classic Gamine)
Anne Hathaway (Romantic Ethereal Gamine)
Nicole Kidman (Dramatic Classic Gamine)
Reese Witherspoon (Dramatic Gamine Ingenue)
Jessica Chastain (Ethereal Dramatic)
Margot Robbie (Ethereal Classic Gamine Romantic)
Gal Gadot (Romantic Dramatic Classic)
Zendaya (Ethereal Dramatic Gamine)
Lupita Nyong’o (Dramatic Gamine Ingenue)
Brie Larson (Natural Dramatic Gamine)
Saoirse Ronan (Ethereal Natural Classic)
Note: For each actress, their essences aren’t necessarily listed in order from highest to lowest percentage. For this post, I’m just interested in whether or not a celebrity has a significant amount of a given essence, not how much of that essence they have.
Step 3: Counting the style essences
Next, I counted how often each style essence appeared in the old and modern Hollywood lists.
Essence count old Hollywood list:
Classic: 13
Romantic: 11
Ethereal: 10
Natural: 9
Dramatic: 7
Ingenue: 6
Gamine: 5
Essence count modern Hollywood list:
Dramatic: 15
Ethereal: 12
Gamine: 12
Romantic: 8
Classic: 7
Natural: 4
Ingenue: 2
Summary of the main findings:
Which style essences were more common in old (vs. modern) Hollywood?
Classic, Natural, and Ingenue: Classic is the most common old Hollywood essence, almost double compared to modern Hollywood. Natural is also about double in old vs. modern Hollywood. Ingenue is triple in old vs. modern Hollywood.
Which essences are more common in modern (vs. old) Hollywood?
Dramatic and Gamine: Dramatic is the most common essence in modern Hollywood and is about double compared to old Hollywood. Gamine is more than double in modern vs. old Hollywood.
Step 4: Interpreting the findings
Importantly, these findings and conclusions are speculative, especially because the sample size was small—a future post may use a larger sample of celebrities!
Why Classic may be more common in old Hollywood
Old Hollywood stars have been deemed “Classic beauties.” They’re icons from a different era whose balanced, well-proportioned faces still provoke admiration today.
Grace Kelly (Ethereal Natural Classic) and Elizabeth Taylor (Romantic Ethereal Classic) have symmetrical faces with balanced proportions.
But if Classic faces are so beautiful, why don’t we see them as often in modern Hollywood?
One possibility: maybe old Hollywood had more rigid beauty ideals, heavily favoring Classic symmetry and typical facial proportions.
And maybe modern Hollywood has greater appreciation for more unique, non-Classic types of beauty, perhaps reflecting a cultural shift to valuing diversity in many forms.
We still value Classic beauty, but now it’s part of a broader spectrum of what society finds attractive.
I also see the decrease in Classic faces as potentially related to the increase in Dramatic faces.
Why Dramatic may be more common in modern Hollywoood
Of all the essences, people with high amounts of Classic may be most likely to be told they resemble other people, because highly Classic faces can have similar facial feature configurations, and feature sizes and shapes, to one another.
Is it bad to look similar to others?
From an attractiveness standpoint, no! Classic faces tend to have balanced proportions and high levels of symmetry, features that many people consider attractive.
But modern U.S. culture encourages standing out. Brand yourself—be exciting, be engaging, be different—but not so different that you aren’t on trend, of course. Be different in the accepted, societally-sanctioned way.
Classic facial features don’t visually embody the modern philosophy of standing out. They tend to make a face look more similar to other faces—blending in.
But you know what facial features do make a face stand out? Dramatic ones.
Highly Dramatic faces pull off eye-catching makeup, too.
In the modern world, we're overwhelmed with novel stimuli, far more than we can realistically focus on. So the people competing for our attention—like advertisers and movie makers—may be inclined to go bigger. They may (even subconsciously) seek actresses with longer, more angular, more unusual and striking bone structure and features. Add Dramatic to faces to make them stand out.
Dramatic fashion stands out, too. Ethereal Natural Classic Grace Kelly and Romantic Ethereal Classic Elizabeth Taylor wouldn’t have pulled off this bold dress the way Ethereal Dramatic Gamine Zendaya does.
Why Natural may be more common in old Hollywood
The idea that modern Western society values striking, attention-grabbing features might also explain why the Natural style essence was more common in old vs. modern Hollywood.
You could argue that Natural is the most common style essence. So, as with Classic, having high amounts of Natural may make you appear to resemble many other people.
Which, when it comes to attraction, again isn’t a bad thing—there’s some research indicidating that people might have greater trust in or even attraction to familiar-looking faces.
But it may feel like a bad thing if you’re trying to create a standout ad campaign or blockbuster movie that’s going to outcompete the trillions of other information bytes fighting to dominate consumers’ brains.
So Dramatic faces became more popular, Natural and Classic less so.
Why Ingenue may be more common in old Hollywood
Similar principles may explain why Ingenue is less common in modern Hollywood: with its dainty curving lines and vibe of sweetness and kindness, Ingenue is essentially the visual and conceptual opposite of angular, avant-garde Dramatic.
Beautiful Zooey Deschanel, a dominant Ingenue
And when we think about sweetness and kindness and women’s faces, what also comes to mind is traditional femininity, which embodies qualities such as submissiveness and gentleness.
So I also wonder—again, this is all speculation and opinion and could easily be wrong—if the increase in Dramatic and corresponding decrease in Ingenue reflects feminist cultural shifts.
I don’t think this is the full explanation—after all, Ingenue was actually pretty rare in old Hollywood, too. In my observation, the essence is rare in the general population.
But Ingenue may be even rarer in modern Hollywood, and maybe that is in some way related to modern women’s aim to be perceived as powerful and highly competent, qualities visually projected by Dramatic. Modern women don’t want to be solely identified with traditionally feminine qualities like sweetness and gentleness, qualities visually projected by Ingenue.
Art mirrors life, and life mirrors art. So maybe a real-world societal rejection of being defined solely by Ingenue qualities led to a decrease in Ingenue women on screen.
Why Gamine may be more common in modern Hollywood
This could also explain why Gamine has increased in modern Hollywood. Gamine has the attention-grabbing angularity of Dramatic. And like Dramatic, Gamine contradicts a vibe of sweetness—Gamine often looks playful and mischevious, even rule-breaking.
So that would be my very reductive initial thoughts on why Dramatic and Gamine have maybe become increasingly represented in Hollywood over time, with potential decreases in Natural, Classic, and Ingenue.
Again, it’s very hard to tell based on the small sample size. Plus I didn’t do real statistics. Plus probably other issues.
Why Ethereal and Romantic are more consistently depicted
Finally, why might Romantic and Ethereal have stayed more consistently represented in Hollywood across time?
If “attention-grabbing” is an important quality for modern celebrity faces, Romantic and Ethereal probably fit. These essences tend to have features that are exaggerated in size and shape.
Romantics also look harmonious in a lot of makeup and elaborate hair and fashion, which can be further attention-grabbing.
And Ethereals often look unique and otherworldly. They stand out in a different way than Dramatics or Gamines, but they do stand out.
Ethereal and Romantic may have enough softness to harmonize with the classic beauty standards of old Hollywood, while also having enough attention-grabbing elements to fit in with modern Hollywood.
Conclusion
All the essences are gorgeously, heartbreakingly beautiful in their own ways. And no form of beauty is superior. As these tentative findings suggest, if you have Ethereal and/or Romantic, you may be in luck—you may have some of the most popular essences across decades. And Romantic Ethereal does have a heartstoppingly beautiful vibe, reminding us of deep emotions like love and of transcending ourselves to find a higher purpose.
In the case of modern Hollywood, though, we could be cynical and say that Romantic and Ethereal beauty are sometimes appropriated for attention-grabbingness, along with Dramatic and Gamine, and money-making ability.
The antidote to modern excess may be the vibe of the Natural Classic Ingenue: confident, down-to-earth Natural; restrained, balanced Classic; and sweet, kind Ingenue. Especially in the modern age, kindness is an underratedly gorgeous quality. And beautiful Natural Classic Ingenues like Jessica Henwick and Leslie Mann are especially harmonious with big smiles.
