Victorian views on Fashion and Beauty - did they know more than we do?

From Fashion & Erotisim:
I found this group of quotes particularly interesting because they almost seemed to have more direction, common sense and reasoning than anything relating to fashion today.
Particularly how from "the voluptuous mid-victorian woman, the statuesque gibson-girl type an the slender poiret flapper" is it true that women were progressing toward a natural ideal or were they simply better mimicking youth with cosmetics and the more girlish figure. Whatevers true there was a definite decrease between female beauty and maternity. Maybe simulating childlike looks is a way of distancing yourself as far as possible from accepting age and responsibility...

Then women with cosmetics, immitating youth were percieved as relating to "actresses or certain kinds of women" and cosmetics were "ligitimate for married women, but never young girls" which gives the impression that cosmetics werent completly accepted but by likening them to actresses they became an indulgement for women and eventually a nessesity. It was thought that "false and artificial beauty could destroy them"
It was also thought that "the unnatural can never be beautiful" and "deformity has through long custom become to us beauty" (which ironically is true of all cultures - a search for the unusual but as natural as possible obviously seems something your just born with and to be manufactured by man causes uglyness, deformity and damage because maybe it doesnt corrispond with the fine order of things possibly the Fibonacci code) because a deformity in nature is called evolution.

I think the Victorians got it right when they said "a narrow waist between tasty hips and a proud bosom was always admired, but even a splendid form was often transformed according to the fantasies of fashion" and that a long slender waist seemed to make women more fragile, and maybe because of natural instincts men are drawn to this to the need to protect, this could also make women statuesque like, relating them to a piece of art or Venus.

Is it infact that women change themselves into sex objects "the surveyor of women in herself is male; the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object - and most particularly an object of vision a sight" as we have always had the need to be attractive to our peers and the opposite sex.

Is it that "fashion change occurs in large part because novelty arouses sexual curiosity and causes the individual to be seen more clearly again" just as we all thrive on something new and colourful I dont think that this was initially intended for fashion, but for travel and seasons and the world around us.

20's fashion was a pivital point of where female dress became "chic and casual, very young and semi-masculine and certainly not feminine and beautiful" our need for something new and exciting has always been both a hinderance and advantage. Women now seemed to lack a certain amount of sex appeal with fashion getting younger.