Make-up Through the Centuries

How did we as people arrive at the point where we spend billions every year on cosmetics and it became the social norm for women to wear cosmetics everyday Surely a lady way back in history did not all of a sudden wake up one day and decide to apply eyelashes, lipstick, eyeliner, base, and rouge all at the same time. No, it was, like many things, a culmination of happenings from past times.

Who could forget the Egyptians? That was over four millenia ago. Cleanliness and appearance were very vital to the people of Egypt. Egyptians had faith that the appearance had a direct juncture with the constitution of the spirit. They attempted to always appear neat and smell pleasant. And with a civilization who values their looks, you are inevitably going to have humans who are going to try and stand out. The Egyptians, being the cutting edge people they were, used cosmetics for reasons that were even more intelligent than just trying to look great.

A mixture of lead ore and copper known as Mesdemet was the earliest kind of eye shadow. The dark colors they thought would avert evil eyes from their own. It was also a great disinfectant and bug repellent. Kohl was a dark substance that was also put on around the eyes in an oval shape. It was a combination of lead, ash, ochre, copper, and burnt almonds. A mixture of red clay and water was added to the cheeks to further enhance their appearance. They would also paint their fingernails colors of orange and yellow with a chemical known as henna.

As civilizations started to interact with each other more often, the practice of cosmetics was picked up by the Greeks from the Egyptians. They would color themselves a pale shade with a foundation that contained lead inside. On more than one occasion this ended up being deadly. As the Romans started to pick up the cosmetics practice, the pursuit of beauty became less about practicality and turned into much more unusual routes. The Romans would adorn their nails with a mixture of sheeps blood and cooked body fat. An old Roman citizen once stated, A woman without paint is like food without salt.

Many years after the Egyptian empire crumbled, the fashion standard around the world was a pale complexion. Only women who were low-class and had to labor out in the field all day with their husbands had dark, sun dired skin. The upper society ladies of course did not have to endure physical labor like that therefore they remained out of the sun and had pale skin.

Success was often measured by a person's light skin tone. If you had enough riches, then you did not have to labor. So a pale skin hue was very serious to some members of society. To achieve this appearance, women (and men too) would apply a combination of hydroxide, lead oxide, and carbonate in a powdered form to put on their faces and bodies. Unfortunately, this caused a sometimes deadly side effect, lead poisoning.To cure this problem, chemists in the early nineteen hundreds at last created a combination of zinc oxide that made the skin able to breathe and kept people out of that annoying lead poisoning death. It worked so well that it is still used today by cosmetics makers.

In the Edwardian era of London, about the time of the turn of the century of 1900, women with a recreational income would throw swanky parties and do a bunch of entertaining to display their wealth. It was extremely important for a woman to be the most beautiful belle there, especially if they were the hostess of the function. City and exotic lifestyles with factors like smoggy air produced by the cities at that time, bad diets, and very little or no exercise aged the women quickly. Women would need products like anti-aging creams and face creams to mask their blemishes. They would also travel to the salon. It was a little different back then than it is today. Ladies would sneak into the back entrance of the salons and cover their faces as they went in. One of the most famous of these discreet beauty parlors was the House of Cyclax, that would sell foams and rouges to women. Mrs. Henning, who was the owner, sold and came out with many products for her frenzied customers who did not want anybody to know that they were getting on in the years.

The modern day woman is the benefactor of years of trial and error with a virtually unlimited choice of beauty products for any look they want to accomplish. There are thousands of cosmetics producers who have products in this now billion dollar per year industry. Beauty products sell all year and even in times of recession. So ladies, thank your ancestors and their concern for their personal appearance for yours that you have nowadays. They probably didn't want to put on their face some mornings either.