Beauty is Pain

I often hear many people around me saying how appearance and beauty has such little importance in the world. People who take pride in how they look or those who maybe go to more extreme lengths to change the way they are tend to get shunned as shallow and a little dumb. But if the beauty industry and everything surrounding it is so unimportant, why have both men and women gone to such extremes to achieve 'perfection' even in times of war, poverty and injustice?

Dating back to the 18th century people have gone to the uttermost lengths to achieve beauty to the point of poisoning themselves. 

Throughout the century men and women wore white lead powders and pastes on their faces and pink rouge was applied heavily on the cheeks. This often caused lead poisoning and their skin would often blacken and become rough in texture. Excessive use of lead also caused eyes to swell and baldness was very common, but sometimes it even caused death.

Whereas today we have the gift of concealer to cover blemishes and scars, in the 18th century patches made of leather or black taffeta were worn cut into the shape of hearts, birds or stars. Where you placed these patches on your face, determined your political allegiance, sexual orientation and personality.

Big hair for women was very popular and it took so much time and money to create the extravagant up-dos that they would leave their hair up for months on end, making it difficult to sleep. Many men and women resorted to shaving their heads and having wigs made because lice where very common and the scratching was almost unbearable. Eyebrows were also often shaved off and penciled onto the face much higher up or fake ones were made using mouse skin! How awful does that sound?. 

As lots of people at the time had rotten teeth, false teeth were invented to replace them. Wood or bone threaded on a wire was put in the mouth, but these were very painful and inconvenient. 

As you can see beauty and cosmetics have come a very long way since then and it is no longer necessary to poison yourself to achieve a certain look.

Not to mention corsets during Victorian times, that were tied so tight that they caused broken ribs and a deformed posture.

 So has our sacrifice for beauty got more extreme, or is it actually far better?

We live in a world obsessed with cosmetic surgery, extreme dieting,  beauty pageants and real life barbie dolls. Taking pride in how you look does not equal vanity, it shows that you have respect for yourself and that is not a bad thing. I think the real problem is people thinking they need to completely change their appearance, rather than just enhancing it.

Thank you for reading! x