This is how the face of beauty has evolved through the ages

From flawless skin and youthful beauty to confidence, authenticity and self-acceptance, our understanding of what it means to be beautiful changes as we do. Three South African women reflect on how age, experience, culture and motherhood have shaped their definitions of beauty — and why true beauty may have less to do with how we look and more to do with how at home we feel in ourselves.

What does beauty mean when you look beyond the mirror? For many women, the answer evolves with age. What once felt tied to appearance, perfection and the approval of others can gradually become something more personal: confidence, authenticity, self-acceptance and the freedom to define beauty on your own terms.

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From navigating acne and changing beauty standards to growing older, building careers and raising daughters, our relationship with beauty is shaped by the experiences we collect along the way. Social media and cultural expectations may continue to influence what we see as beautiful, but with time often comes a different perspective — one that makes room for individuality, imperfections and every stage of a woman’s life.

We asked three South African women to share how their definitions of beauty have changed over the years. Their stories reveal a common thread: perhaps beauty is not about remaining the same, but about becoming increasingly comfortable with who you are.

Ytryn Mokone

Beauty, to me, has become so much more than having clear skin or looking perfect.

I’ve struggled with acne since my high school days, and well into my mid-20s, I often felt like I had to hide. I would use makeup, filters and anything I could to cover my skin because I was afraid of how people would see me. For a long time, I thought beauty meant looking flawless.

Being introduced to Environ skin care became part of a much bigger journey for me, one of learning to understand and care for my skin, but also learning to be kinder to myself. It reminded me that beauty isn’t about hiding our imperfections; it’s about embracing ourselves through every season. As I’ve grown, my definition of beauty has evolved. Today, beauty is confidence, self-acceptance, authenticity and feeling comfortable in your own skin. It’s recognising that the real beauty lies within, and that our scars, struggles and imperfections are part of what makes our stories uniquely ours.

I think our perception of beauty is shaped by so many things: our upbringing, culture, relationships, social media and the beauty standards we grow up seeing. But ultimately, I believe there comes a point when you stop trying to fit into someone else’s idea of beautiful and start growing into your own. For me, beauty is no longer about being perfect. It’s about being comfortable, confident and unapologetically myself.

Tandi Potgieter

"At 51, beauty means something very different to me than it did in my 20s. Having spent much of my life in the beauty pageant industry, and now as a director of the Woman of Stature Awards South Africa, I have had a front-row seat to changing trends, standards and expectations of what a woman is “supposed” to look like. When I was younger, beauty felt far more connected to appearance, perfection and how others saw me. With age, experience and the confidence that comes from creating a life and career of my own, I have come to see beauty as presence, authenticity and the way a woman carries herself. It is in the confidence to know who you are, the resilience to reinvent yourself, and the freedom to stop measuring your worth against somebody else’s version of beautiful.

Social media and the women around me have all influenced my perspective, but growing older has taught me to be far more discerning about which voices I allow to define me. If there is one thing I would want the next generation of women to understand, it is that beauty standards will continue to change, but you should never have to change your sense of worth to keep up with them. I have learned that my "flaws" are what makes me unique and what others may love most about me. The most compelling beauty is a woman who feels completely at home in her own skin.

Sanet Bombas

When I was younger, I think beauty was very much about how other people saw me. I was quite obsessed with how I was perceived, Sanet how I looked, whether I looked put together, whether people thought I was beautiful. I wanted to understand beauty and, in many ways, I wanted to understand how to create it.

That obsession eventually led me to enrol at a beauty college while simultaneously establishing my own beauty spa. At the time, I thought I was simply building a business around something I loved. Looking back, I realise I was also on a personal journey of trying to understand what beauty meant to me and why being seen as beautiful mattered so much.

As I’ve moved through my 30s and now into my 40s, my understanding of beauty has changed quite dramatically. I still enjoy looking after myself and I still love beauty clearly, that part of me hasn’t gone anywhere! But I no longer feel that my beauty is something I have to prove to anyone.

Today, beauty feels much more connected to confidence, presence and how comfortable you are in your own skin. It is the freedom to walk into a room without constantly wondering how you are being perceived. It is knowing who you are, knowing what you bring to the table and not needing external validation to feel worthy.

I think culture has played a big role in how I see beauty. Growing up, there were certain ideas of what a beautiful woman was supposed to look like, and like many women, I absorbed some of those messages without necessarily questioning them. Relationships, motherhood and simply growing older have also changed my perspective. Life has a way of teaching you that your appearance is only one very small part of who you are.

Social media has made this even more complicated. We are constantly exposed to images of women who appear flawless, youthful and perfectly put together. But I’ve learnt to appreciate the woman behind the image, the woman who has lived, experienced things, made mistakes, raised children, built businesses, lost things, gained things and continues to evolve.

And perhaps one of the funniest things about getting older is that people sometimes tell me I look much younger than I am. I’m in my 40s and I’m often mistaken for being about ten years younger. I won’t pretend I don’t enjoy hearing that! But what makes me happier is that I don’t feel like I have to chase youth. I want to age well, to take care of myself and to feel good, but I also want to embrace every stage of my life rather than constantly trying to look like I’m in another one.

Being a mother to a daughter has made me think about beauty even more deeply. I don’t want my daughter to grow up believing that her worth is tied to her face, her body, her weight, her skin, her hair or whether someone else finds her attractive.

I want her to know that beauty is not a competition and that there will always be a new standard, a new trend or someone telling women what they should look like. What matters is that she knows herself. I want her to understand that she can take care of her appearance and enjoy fashion, makeup and beauty without making those things the measure of her value.

Most importantly, I want her to know that she doesn’t have to be beautiful to be worthy. She is worthy because of who she is, how she treats people, what she stands for, what she contributes and the life she chooses to build.

For me, beauty has gone from being something I was deeply concerned about how other people viewed, to something that is much more internal. I think that is one of the gifts of getting older. You stop asking, “Am I beautiful enough?” and start asking, “Am I happy with the woman I’ve become?” And today, that is what beauty means to me, becoming more comfortable with yourself, embracing the woman you are at every stage, and understanding that there is beauty not only in how you look, but in everything you have lived through to become who you are.