The Virtually Dangerous Beauty Through the Ages

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Women get under anesthesia for face-lifts, suck fatty cells out of their thighs, curlicue needles into their faces for unclear reasons, and inject mortiferous toxins to get rid of wrinkles. These things all seem, well, rational to us now. Simply will our great, great, cracking granddaughters think and so?

Every generation loves to look dorsum on the follies of past generations and express mirth about how dumb they were. "How could those idiots accept thought bird-poop facials and fish pedicures were a adept idea?" they'll say of us in 2213.  But there's a lot we tin can learn past looking back at past beauty rituals: Mainly, that no one has ever wanted wrinkles or zits, celebrities will always exist aspirational, and (beauty) history volition repeat itself, just with different ingredients.

Caroline Rance, a historian and the author of The Quack Dr., acknowledges that powerful, popular women take e'er set trends. Elizabeth I inspired a generation of women to smear pb all over their faces, much the same way Gwyneth Paltrow champions greenish juice (which I'thou convinced will someday be proven to be toxic) and laser treatments.

Equally yous're contemplating your January self-improvement program – a dear diet, mayhap? – in the coming weeks, have a peek at some of the deadly and disgusting things women have washed in by centuries.

Lead Makeup

Lead has a long and alarming history equally a makeup ingredient (and indeed, notwithstanding plagues us today). According to Rance, it's been used in cosmetics since antiquity. In the eighteenth century, women mixed it with vinegar to brand ceruse, which helped them achieve that extremely pale look popular at the fourth dimension. It also visually smoothed out the face up — there was no such thing as sunscreen back then, and smallpox was rampant, so women often had a lot to hide. Commercial lead makeup products (similar "Flower of Ninon") then became available in the eighteenth century. People who used pb-based products poisoned themselves slowly, and in the meantime, suffered side effects like grey hair, dried-out skin, severe abdominal pain, and constipation. Pretty!

Arsenic:

Once lead was out of the motion picture, arsenic took its place every bit the next pale-complexion miracle production. And every bit anyone who read Flowers in the Attic  knows, taking arsenic is bad. It destroys ruby blood cells, which leads to pale skin, and somewhen, expiry. Co-ordinate to Rance, women would make DIY versions past soaking the arsenic out of wing paper. Only the entrepreneurs of the 24-hour interval saw an opportunity there, and products like "Dr. McKenzie's Improved Harmless Arsenic Complexion Wafers" hit the market. Too decease, they could also brand you go bald. To add insult to injury, if y'all stopped taking them abruptly, information technology would cause your complexion to become haywire, thus incentivizing y'all to keep taking them. Arsenic products were around until the twenties.

Mercury:

Mercury has made headlines recently, when it was discovered in modern cosmetics. Before the days of benzoyl peroxide, mercury was used to cure blemishes (and also syphilis, spawning the delightful saying, "A night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury"). Simply it's easily absorbed through the pare and can cause birth defects, kidney and liver issues, fatigue, irritability, tremors, depression, and a metal sense of taste in the mouth. Oh, and death.

Mortiferous Nightshade:

Italian women, who chosen it belladonna, used deadly nightshade as an eye driblet to dilate their pupils, which supposedly made them more than attractive, or at least, fabricated them look like anime characters. Information technology can cause visual distortion and sensitivity to low-cal, and if taken systemically, can kill y'all pretty apace.

Radiaoactive Skin-care:

Forget about diamonds for making your skin radiant. Just use actual radiation! People went crazy for radium in the early twentieth century after the Curies discovered information technology, and it popped up in diverse skin creams. "If placed on the face where the skin has get wrinkled or tired the radio-active forces immediately take event on the nerves and tissues. A continuous steady current of free energy flows into the skin, and earlier long the wrinkles have disappeared," reads an advertizing for Radior Chin Straps in 1915. Oh, dear.

X-Ray Depilation:

Scientists discovered X-rays in the early 2twentieth century and promptly put them to use removing excess body hair. According to one report, some patients had to be exposed to the 10-ray for up to twenty hours. Sure, their pilus roughshod out, but they besides had skin thickening, cloudburst, ulcerations, and later on, cancer. Afterward a lot of bad side effects and lawsuits, everyone figured information technology out. But for a long time, the X-ray was marketed as a perfectly safe device for this aesthetic procedure.

Does this make anyone merely a teeny flake nervous virtually lasers?

Lard and Other Hair Horrors:

In the late 1700s, hairstyles reached their height. Literally. To go the highest hair possible, women often used wooden and atomic number 26 frames, leather horsehair pads, and lots of extensions. Then, hair was curled with "hot tongs," covered with lard to hold it in place, and powdered with lead. Afterward all that, evidently, you weren't going to wash it for a while. So then the lice and vermin came, requiring "long scratching sticks." There are even reports of women wearing cages around their coifs at night to keep the mice away. Formaldehyde in Brazilian blowouts is nothing compared to rodents munching on your head.

Eyelash Extensions:

Let'south allow this 1899 newspaper article almost eyelash extensions to speak for itself:

"An ordinary fine needle is threaded with a long pilus, generally taken from the head of the person to be operated upon. The lower border of the eyelid is so thoroughly cleaned, and in order that the process may exist equally painless equally possible rubbed with a solution of cocaine. The operator and then by a few practiced touches runs his needle through the farthermost edges of the eyelid betwixt the epidermis and the lower edge of the cartilage of the tragus. The needle passes in and out along the edge of the chapeau leaving its hair thread in loops of carefully graduated length."

It continues in that same horrifying vein for three more paragraphs. Pretty sure even the Kardashian relatives took a pass on this ane.

Suddenly, going au naturel on a daily basis doesn't sound so bad.

The Most Dangerous Beauty Through the Ages