ShortHand: Deadly Beauty Practices

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They say that beauty is pain, and anyone who has ever battled with the miniature torture device that is an eyelash curler will be able to attest to that fact.

Today, we live in an image-obsessed world where aesthetic treatments are everywhere. Botox, filler, BBLs, laser hair removal, you name it. No matter what the perceived flaw, beauty boffins can inject, sculpt, pluck, and laser us into perfection.

And this obsession is far from a modern idea. Since the dawn of time, we humans have been taking drastic measures to look hot, sometimes even risking our own lives in the process. From lead makeup, to arsenic wafers, to x-rays, and botched plastic surgeries, the pursuit of beauty has always come at a cost. How much would you risk for the ideal glow up? This is the drop dead gorgeous ShortHand.

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Now, you might think ancient civilizations might have had too much on their plates for vanity with all that empire building and whatnot. But as it turns out, they were just as concerned about looking fit as we are today.

In ancient Egypt, Cleopatra wasn't the only one rocking that iconic eyeliner. Coal, a black powder made from a mineral form of lead sulfite called Galena, was used by men, women and children across all Egyptian social classes. And if your alarm bells started ringing at lead, trust us, we'll get back to that. But in small amounts, it actually protected the eyes from harsh sunlight, repelled insects and also helped to prevent eye infections. Who knew? I mean, maybe the Egyptians, but not me.

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They knew loads of stuff.

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They did, didn't they? Then, over in ancient Rome, the wealthy were said to swear by crocodile dung face masks. Because nothing says fresh face like smearing reptile shit on your cheeks, apparently.

Romans also reportedly used urine-based mouthwash, believing the ammonia would give them pearly white smiles. And if you're thinking these methods seem pretty tame, well, things are about to get a whole lot gnarlier.

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In 10th-century China, the truly toe-curling practice of foot-binding began. The story goes that it all kicked off when the Southern Tang emperor, Li Yu, asked his concubine Yao Niang to bind her feet with white silk in the shape of a crescent moon and dance on the points of a golden lotus sculpture that he had created. Yao Niang's sexy routine went down a store with upper-class women copying her. The lotus feet craze spread through all social classes over the centuries, and eventually becoming a core beauty standard for Chinese women. The horrific practice involved breaking young girls' feet and binding them tightly to stop them growing too large, creating an unnaturally deep arch.

Special lotus shoes were created with freakishly tiny feet seen as a mark of feminine beauty and grace. Needless to say, this caused many women intense pain and lifelong disabilities.

The practice finally died out in the early 20th century after anti-foot binding campaigns. But as recently as 2007, a handful of elderly Chinese women still held their scars.

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Back in medieval and renaissance Europe, some very dodgy beauty hacks emerged. Women reportedly used literal cat shit as hair remover, while balms and tonics containing decidedly witchy ingredients like newts, bats, frogs and snakes were also popular. And things even got a bit vampiric, with one famous physician recommending skin conditions be treated with three litres of blood from healthy redheaded men. Bloodletting gingers aside, these were admittedly more itchy than truly hazardous.

Enter the Italians, for whom beauty was very much in the eye of the beholder. In the Renaissance era, for some reason, large pupils were considered to be very sexy for women. And god knows how, but at some point people discovered that if you dropped the juice of a certain plant into your eyes, it would make your pupils blow out. Now, this was thanks to the chemical atropine, which blocks the receptors in eye muscles that are meant to contract pupil size. And fun fact, optometrists today still use it in regulated doses to dilate pupils for eye tests. The plant was named Belladonna, meaning beautiful woman after this practice.

But Belladonna also has another more sinister nickname, Deadly Nightshade. And yeah, the clue is kind of there. Unfortunate side effects of Belladonna drops included blurred vision, trouble focusing, headaches, light sensitivity, and glaucoma. And with prolonged use, it could even be fatal.

Still, for many, the risk was worth it to achieve those bedroom eyes. And ladies were still using it across the Western world, well into the 19th century.

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We can't really talk about beauty practices without addressing the thorny topic of beauty standards. Whilst today we have the Kardashian inspired ideal of bronzed skin for much of history, the Western world was obsessed with looking as pale as humanly possible. Aside from the obvious racial implications, fair skin was seen as the ultimate sign of wealth because it showed that you were rich enough to not have to toil away in the fields all day. But since not everyone had the dubious honor of looking naturally ghostly, they got creative with a cosmetic concoction known as Venetian Ceruse. Popular from the early modern period onwards, women and some wealthy men applied this white paste onto their skin to signal their hot trot status.