Anna Ginsburg’s What Is Beauty is a labour of love. Clocking in at nearly three minutes, the animated short film – commissioned by CNN for International’s Women Day – is entirely hand-drawn, with 12.5 drawings making up each second.

Each frame shows dusky blue bodies in constant motion, capturing over 30,000 years of changing beauty standards. Mayan fertility goddesses morph into reclining Renaissance women with thick thighs and dimpled stomachs; the recognisable hourglass silhouette of Marilyn Monroe mutates into to the familiar big-boobs-and-bum look that’s currently in vogue. The pressure to look a certain way never ends, Ginsburg’s mutating figures silently say: it only changes shape.

It’s that perpetually raised bar that inspired the 28-year-old animation director to make the visuals in the first place.

“My little sister has really extreme anorexia,” Ginsburg tells stylist.co.uk. “It made me think about her perception of the ultimate beautiful woman when she was 12, which is when she started suffering. Yet my other sister is now looking at what [body image] she wants and her ideals are totally different, only [eight] years later. She wants a big bum and boobs and a non-existent waist, whereas her older sister wanted to be skeletal.

“It gave me a newfound love and appreciation for my relationship with my own body but it also made me feel incredibly protective, especially over young women. I wanted to communicate something about how quickly this ideal [of female beauty] is changing and how trying to keep up can have devastating consequences.”

This incredible short film explores how the ‘ideal body’ has changed over time