Can a woman from the 19th century still feel painfully familiar to modern women? Empress Elisabeth of Austria does. Not because of her crown, but because of the pressure she lived under to look perfect, to perform beauty, and to hide pain behind grace.
Known to history as Sisi, Elisabeth was celebrated for her elegance, charm, and deep bond with the Hungarian people. Portraits immortalised her as a fairytale empress. But behind that shimmery image lay a life marked by control, isolation, and quiet despair. Beauty, for Elisabeth, was not indulgence. It was armour.
Marriage did not bring freedom. Instead, it confined her. Life at Vienna’s Hofburg Palace followed a rigid Spanish court protocol that governed everything, from what she wore and ate to where she went and whom she met. Her powerful mother-in-law, Archduchess Sophie, controlled much of her daily life, even taking charge of raising her children. Elisabeth, still young and unprepared, felt reduced to a decorative figure in her own life.
Obsessed with maintaining control over at least one thing, her body, she subjected herself to extreme discipline. Her waist measured just 19.5 inches. At 5 feet 8 inches tall, she weighed between 96 and 100 pounds. Her diet consisted of raw eggs, milk, and little else. Exercise was relentless. What the world admired as beauty slowly became both her shield and her prison.
Hours were spent every day on her hair washing, combing, and inspecting every fallen strand. She slept with raw veal and mashed strawberries pressed against her face to “preserve youth.” After the age of 32, she refused to be photographed, terrified that the world might see her ageing. To Elisabeth, time itself felt like an enemy.
Seeking escape, she travelled endlessly through Hungary, Greece, England, rarely staying in one place long enough to rest. Movement became her only form of freedom, though peace always remained out of reach.
The reality of Elisabeth’s life, as historians now understand it, was far darker than the legend suggests. Royal women of the 19th century were expected to produce heirs, perform ceremonial duties, and prioritise appearance above all else. Elisabeth captured this suffocation in her poetry, often describing her existence as imprisonment.
More than a century later, her story still resonates. Because the struggle to meet impossible beauty standards and the cost of living behind them has not vanished. It has only changed its mirror.
