This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Ohio U chapter.

We’ve all seen the hilarious ecards either from posts of friends or www.someecards.com itself, but does the woman featured above look familiar? Have you seen her before? This popular face is not just random configuration of lines; she is the iconic role model for women from the 1890s until the 1920s known as the “Gibson Girl”; much like Marilyn Monroe, if you will.

Illustrator Charles Dana Gibson compiled the Gibson Girl in 1890 by viewing thousands of American girls and turning them into one beautiful, voluptuous woman. As the first ideal feminine beauty, the Gibson Girls were always tall, slender, and well-proportioned with big hips and a big bust (not to mention big hair). Pictures of this ideal were featured in newspapers and magazines of the time and were supposed to counter the woman’s suffrage movement that took hold in 1920. The Gibson Girl was uninterested in politics and vested in self-fulfilling feminine roles. Perhaps that’s why the iconic beauty began to disappear as soon as women gained voting rights. Besides the history lesson, it’s still pretty cool. The more you know!