“Miss Lovely Eyes” Competition in Florida, ca. 1930

Miss Lovely Eyes, as you can imagine, was a contest to see who had the most beautiful eyes. However, in their efforts to be trustworthy and righteous, they thought the best way to objectively judge that was by concealing the rest of the face, so the judges wouldn’t be biased by the participants’ features.

As a result, you have images like this one, with women wearing extremely disturbing masks. The success of this pageant was such that they were even thinking about focusing on other features of the face, like the ears or nose.