7 Beauty Patterns from the Past That Look Crazy Today

Every season has its own fashion, not only for clothes but also for appearance. In the past, some standards of beauty were so uncommon that extreme measures had to be taken to achieve the much-desired “beauty ideal”. From the lotus feet to the metal rings on the neck, it is possible to identify different patterns – temporal and cultural – in both men and women. Furthermore, many of these “fashionable” experiments were not only painful, but also dangerous.

we, from awesome.club, we decided to find out what other beauty “rituals” existed in the past and we are going to share our findings with you. Follow up!

Perhaps the eyebrows are the most decisive part of the face in terms of harmony and, therefore, many are concerned with making them “perfect”. In Ancient Greece, for example, it was fashionable to have a “one-eye”. If a woman wasn’t born with this trait, she could rub charcoal between her eyebrows or even make an “implant” out of goat hair.

The inhabitants of Medieval China went even further: around the 2nd-3rd centuries, the fashion was to have colored eyebrows. One of the emperors of that time ordered his wives to have blue-green eyebrows. To comply with their husband’s request, the women had to shave their eyebrows and then draw them with expensive colored paints, which were brought in from outside China. This not only pleased the emperor’s eyes, it also showed people how prosperous he was, as only very wealthy people could afford to buy foreign paints.

However, this trend did not last long, and not long after, natural eyebrows were back in fashion. It is worth remembering that the formats still varied a lot, from the long and thick to the short and thin.

According to historians, at the end of the 14th century, Queen Elizabeth of Bavaria became the model of a fashion, which today can be considered “strange”: high forehead and swan neck. To satisfy beauty standards, women shave their hair above their foreheads and at the back of their necks and pluck their eyebrows. Not even the eyelashes were spared: sometimes they removed both the upper and lower eyelashes.

Long fingernails had been a trend in China for centuries, but the reason was quite unusual: keeping your fingernails that way indicated that you didn’t do hard work with your hands, as you could have servants to do it for you.

During the Qing Dynasty, which lasted for almost 300 years (until the beginning of the 20th century), this fashion reached its zenith and the nails of some aristocrats reached up to 25 cm in length. Having nails like that was not comfortable at all and, therefore, some people chose to leave long nails only on the little finger and ring finger. Furthermore, to prevent them from breaking, a kind of protective “cover” was used, made of precious metals and decorative stones.

The fashion for very white fur emerged in England in the 18th century. To make the skin whiter, women used all kinds of “exotic” products, such as dried horse manure. But the most dangerous of all was lead, used in the preparation of lime to apply to the face. Furthermore, the highest concentrations of this metal were in the red paint, which was used on the lips and cheeks to create contrast. The whiteness of the skin was further enhanced by lines drawn with blue pencil on the face, which were supposed to mimic blood vessels.

During the Georgian era, not only the skin was whitened, but the teeth as well. To give a porcelain appearance, a powder was used, in which the main substance was sulfuric acid. Evidently, such a substance disintegrated the enamel and the teeth themselves over time. People with good financial conditions could pay for implants: those most in need volunteered to sell their teeth to the dentist.

After the War at Waterloo, a new fad began: dental prostheses, made from scraps of teeth found on the battlefield. From the second half of the 19th century onwards, porcelain prostheses appeared, but many professionals refused to use them, as they still preferred the teeth “borrowed” from the war dead.

Francisco Petrarca spoke of his muse, Laura, in his poems as an example not only of beauty, but also of virtue. Thanks to the poet, in the 15th century, the blonde hair trend began. To achieve the golden tone, the ladies needed to dye their locks. The process was even longer than it is today, taking about a few days to complete. In some documents from the twelfth century, it is possible to find instructions on the procedure for how to dye the hair, which took place in two stages: a mixture of different ingredients was passed on the head (which would be covered with leaves) and then it was waited for two days. to wash. After washing, a second mixture was applied, which would also be removed only after two days.

Classic corsets, which create the “tuned” figure of the female body, have been around since the Bronze Age. In Europe, they appeared in different versions in the 15th and 16th centuries. But the fashion really began during the reign of Catherine de Medici. At that time, the corset was able to decrease the waist by up to 33 cm (even if the initial function was just to make the silhouette flat without imperfections), but it was quite harmful to the internal organs.

In your opinion, does beauty always require suffering? Or do you think that the naturalness of each one is the best standard to aim for? Comment!