Archive for August, 2008

Women have been adorning themselves with makeup and color for centuries. The reasons why they do this are to make themselves more attractive and to be more feminine and sexually appealing. It’s to express their creativity, their beauty, to hide what they don’t like about themselves and accentuate what they do like about themselves. Now, I am sharing with you the origin of make-up:

Lipsticks first appeared in the ancient city of Ur, near Babylon, 5000 years ago. Semi-precious stones such as lapis lazuli and malachite were ground to be used as eye shadows. It is said Cleopatra’s lipsticks were made from finely crushed carmine beetles which made a deep red pigment. This was then mixed with ant’s eggs as a base for the lipsticks.

Ancient Greek women painted their cheeks with herbal pastes made from crushed berries and seeds, but their men didn’t like women to look anything other than plain except in the Greek court where they would make their cheeks look red by first coating their face, necks and breasts with a white powder before applying a rouge. At the time they didn’t know that the white powder contained lead and over time would actually destroy their complexion, and in some cases: kill them.

Women during the Middle Ages didn’t wear much make-up, (although blush was worn by prostitutes) until Queen Elizabeth I became one of Britain’s most celebrated users of natural beauty preparations. Elizabethan women still used white lead face paint and mercury sulphide for rouge, but the lead was mixed with vinegar to form a paste called ceruse. The white lead made hair fall out; and the extensive use of ceruse through the Elizabethan era explains the fashion for high foreheads, as hairlines receded. Lipsticks were a blend of cochineal and beeswax, and occasionally a stain made from dark red plant dyes.

This look became the height of fashion in England and France during the 16th century but with powdered white wigs rather than Elizabeth’s red ones. But there continued to be resistance to the idea of makeup: In 1792 a Gentlemen’s magazine in England claimed that women with ‘wooly white hair and fiery red faces’ resembled skinned sheep.

But after the French revolution the extravagance of make up was considered brazen and uncouth, and didn’t really hit a revival until the 1800s. By then, the use of any form of blusher, powder and lipstick had virtually disappeared in Europe and was allowed only on the stage. It was thought that any woman that put lipstick or blusher on was trying to capture a lost youth, and was considered a fake.

Closer to modern times women moved on to a beauty product that was eaten to produce a white skin: Arsenic Complexion Wafers. They worked by poisoning the blood so it transported fewer red blood cells (and less oxygen) to organs. Rouge was made of vegetable substances such as mulberry, which were harmless, but it was colored with cinnabar, a poisonous red shade of mercury. The red cream was also used to paint the lips, (the first lipstick) where it could be easily ingested. Ancient beauty practices not only killed their users occasionally, but poisoned unborn babies as well, resulting in miscarriages.

Throughout history there have been attempts to ban women from using cosmetics: not for their health or safety, but because they were considered immoral or contrary to religious beliefs. One Greek Historian from the 4th century wrote about his bride deceiving him prior to their marriage by wearing make up that didn’t show her true looks. Another Greek, Clement of Alexandria, proposed a law that would prevent women from using cosmetics lest it tricked their husbands into marrying them; and as recently as 1770 a law was put forward to the British parliament proposing that any marriage that was entered into with a woman who used cosmetics prior to the wedding day could be annulled.