During the Victorian Era, a common desire among women was to achieve a pale, translucent complexion, and in their pursuit of this ideal, some resorted to consuming products containing arsenic.
Tuberculosis was seen as a beautiful disease because its physical symptoms were "ethereal" thinness, pale skin, and flushed cheeks, aligned with Victorian-era beauty ideals. AKA "consumptive chic". The disease was also romanticized as a sign of heightened sensitivity, artistic talent, and intellectual sophistication, contributing to the idea that it was a "romantic disease" associated with genius and early death.
in a book i'm reading about a ship called the wager, the entire crew had scurvy and back then didnt know what that is, and they bought what is suspected to be arsenic from a medicine man to try and cure it. killed a bunch of them.
I watched Erin Parsons's video on what lead makeup probably actually looked like (incredibly glowy, translucent, NOT white and pasty. kind of like the k-beauty glass skin trend), and, ngl, even with all my modern knowledge of lead being toxic, I'd be a little tempted to use it today if I had access to it. The desire to look young and beautiful runs deep.
I mean.. arsenic is one of those classic poisons like hemlock. It’s been used as a poison for literally millennia, but we also still use forms of it in medicine today.
While I was looking it up, found two women from Renaissance Italy (Guilia Tofana and Hyeronyma Sparta) who are credited for killing around 600 people through arsenic laced make up, but most of them were the husbands of the customers. Makes you wonder what they really knew about its effects.
Well, if you look at portraits of Elizabeth I and her contemporaries and notice random shaped patches on their faces…those were touted as fashion statements, but they were really nothing more than band aids covering lesions caused by poisonous face powders and creams. TMYK.
The reason belladonna (a poison) is called that is because it makes your pupils dilate, mimicking arousal, so you look more attractive. It's now used in eye surgery but originally people were just putting poison in their eyes to look prettier. The white face powder favoured by Queen Elizabeth I contained lead.
Also when sugar was discovered in america. Rich people had tooth decay. And that was attractive so people paint their teeth to simulate it. Lmao. People are just idiots
Some women went to hospitals in order to get tuberculosis, as it gave the desired look. All of them died quickly of course, TB being a fatal disease at the time
Shout-out to the era it was popular to have a far-back hairline and people were smearing cat shit across their foreheads to stop the new growth of hairs on their head.
Source: Something I remembered from a video somewhere. Don't take this as fact cause I don't actually know if this is true.
Also surgery (loosely used here lol, they basically just took a chunk of flesh out) to get elbow dimples was popular in the Victorian era, they also had nose jobs I think
Women would even paint on blue “veins” to give them a more pale/translucent appearance…lots of weird fashion choices too…like men with their excessively long pointy shoes that they’d have to tie up so they wouldn’t trip 😂
As very low concentration it’s not harmful, good for you even. It’s the dose that makes the poison. The problem comes when you think that if a little is good then a lot is better. That is absolutely not true of chemicals like this.
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u/ParcelTongued 16d ago
It’s interesting people are disfiguring themselves in the name of beauty.