Revolution by rouge – the beginnings of the black beauty industry

For many years, much of the beauty products sold to the black community, were made and developed by white owned companies. Which went just as well as you’d imagine. Most of them were designed to bleach skin and make it lighter in colour. Playing up to the idea, that the darker a persons skin tone, the more undesirable they were. This had some unfortunate merit, based in slavery.

It was an acknowledged fact of life, that slaves who had lighter skin were far more likely to work in plantation homes than those who had darker skin. And although slavery had been abolished decades earlier, these white owned companies were more than happy to harp on that light skin was best.

They advertised their products in regional and national black newspapers, with some going so far as to claim their products ‘removed black skin’.

Advert from Charleston’s Afro American Citizen in 1900

Oh, and if this wasn’t bad enough, the ingredients in these products were horrific.

Mercury and lead were particularly popular and white salesmen actually wore rubber gloves when demonstrating the products. Because though they were happy selling this shit to the black community, dear god they didn’t want this poison getting on their skin.

And the community fought back. In 1912, pharmacist Mrs. J.H.P. Coleman spoke to the National Negro Business League and urged them to stop promoting these products, which she quite rightly summaised were:

‘Positive insults to our self respecting ladies.’ 

But obviously, just not buying these products wasn’t going to fix the issue.

So much of the racism and prejudice in Jim Crow’s America focused on protecting the white ideal of beauty and blocking any notion that to be black and beautiful could be a possibility.

How do you combat this? With:

Beauty Culture

This was how many of the pioneers of the black cosmetic industry in the early 1900’s described what they were doing. They were not only going to come up with better beauty products, but they wanted to create a better culture of beauty.

If you’re a make up user, then you know that swiping on lipstick and blushing your cheeks isn’t just part of your daily routine, it’s a ritual that yes makes you feel beautiful, but also fills you with confidence and armours you to take on the world. Which is why the idea of the black beauty culture was so terrifying to white supremacists. 

Because the pioneers of beauty culture weren’t just about to change the cultural landscape cosmetically. They were going to exfoliate the crap out of it, remove the long term damage that lay under the surface and create a fresh canvas on which to build something truly beautiful.

Meet Annie Turnbo Malone, the definition of a boss.

Bossing Beauty

Annie Turnbo Malone was one of the first beauty culture pioneers. And, she had zero qualifications to her name. But she did have a love of chemistry and hair dressing. Which she decided to combine to create safe and effective hair care.

Now, this was a huge deal. In the same way many make up products aimed at the black community sucked, hair care was awful too! Many women with African American hair had no choice but to use products or home remedies that left their scalps not only itchy and irritated, but with a real risk of major hair loss. Annie’s products helped change that.

But Annie didn’t stop at inventing hair care. After all, this was just as much about creating a cultural shift as it was about the bottom line. So, Annie took her company, Poro and branched out.

In 1918 Annie Turnbo Malone opened the worlds first cosmetology school that specialised in black hair and beauty. 

One of the reasons this was so important, was that for many black women of the era they didn’t have a slew of potential career options at the time. For example, in St Louis, where the school was based, women were banned from all but domestic work.

Yet, Annie’s institution created not only new opportunities, but ones that didn’t exist before. It’s graduates went on to open their own salons and businesses. And it’s estimated that around 75,000 jobs were created through the Poro school over the next few decades.

For evidence of just how amazing this was, check out old copies of The Green Book (many are digitised online which is just *chefs kiss*), where you can literally see beauty parlours boom as the years tick on.

Students of Poro

Ok, so what if you can barely braid and hairdressing and cosmetology aren’t your calling? Well, how about sales? 

One of the big issues for black culture pioneers was that not many department stores would sell their products. So, they got round that by hitting the streets.

Through Poro, Annie had a small army of sales people, who went door to door and town to town, selling her products (in fact of these women was Sarah Breedlove, who’d go on to be known as Madame CJ Walker and run her own army of sales agents)

Then there was Anthony Overton, who owned Overton Hygienic Manufacturing Company (catchy) and had a smaller sales force who went to shops and small businesses to sell their products. Along with mail orders and advertisements in regional black owned publications.

By selling this way even more jobs opened up; just to give you an idea of how many that was, by 1919, Madame CJ Walker had around 25,000 sales agents.

Much of these sales forces were made up of women and as with the beauty schools, it was about creating transferable skills, just as much as boosting revenue. There were training schemes for prospective agents and those that completed their courses for Madame CJ Walker were given a diploma from her Lelia College of Hair Culture.

Example of a Madame CJ Walker advert, which replaced cartoon depictions of women with actual examples (in this case, her!)

Creating the new

Along with the obvious finical and career benefits, advertisements for these sales reps also touted something else – change.

In one advert recruiting for Poro the headline reads:

“Be a Poro Agent. Be an active force for GOOD.”

This was very much going towards the idea of the ‘New Negro‘. An idea that grew with the Harlem Renaissance in the 1910’s and 20’s.

It was about throwing off the Jim Crow stereotypes and embracing racial pride, culture and self expression, along with rising political advocacy and fighting for change against racist ruling.

In 1925, The New Negro, published an essay called ‘The task of negro womanhood.‘ which in part discussed how the ever prevalent stereotype of the ‘grotesque Aunt Jemima’s’ helped tear down not only a woman’s self esteem but her role in society. Stating that:

‘the intrinsic standard of beauty does not rest in the white race’

Beauty Culture took all of this on board. Now doing triple duty; creating new formulas, developing a new job market and solid ensuring everything from their products to their marketing empowered the customer.

Many of the sales agents also joined advocacy groups and clubs. This was reflected all the way to the top.

• Madame CJ Walker publicly joined the NAACP’s anti lycnhing movement 
• Annie Turnbo Malone donated thousands to boost local charities and schools. 
• Anthony Overton published The Half Century, which built itself around speaking out on African American issues. 

Example of the packaging for Overton’s best selling High Brown Face Powder

By the mid twentieth century, white owned companies like L’oreal and Avon were now supplying safe beauty products for all ethnicities (though let’s be real, in terms of cosmetics, the colour ranges were still not acceptable until fairly recently)

African American women were able to pick up make up and hair products with a lot more ease. However, the struggle for a fair and equal beauty industry still goes on today.

Although Madame CJ Walker probably remains the most prominent figure of the early black beauty industry. It’s vital we remember the story of the rise of black beauty culture as a whole.

A tale as much of self entrepreneural spirit as social injustice and a revolution by way of rouge.

The people that worked in and built beauty culture, not only provided solid make up and hair care, but helped forge an entire cultural shift that changed thousands, if not millions of lives.

Further reading: Writing and researching this topic I came across so many fantastic books and papers, which I’ve linked to throughout the article. However, here are some that were beyond useful and I urge you to read in full (seriously they are so amazing!)

• Skin Deep: African American Women and the Building of Beauty Culture in South Carolina, Catherine Davenport 
• The business of black beauty: social entrepreneurship or social injustice?, Simone T.A. Phipps and Leon C. Prieto
• Black and Beautiful: A Content Analysis and Study of Colorism and Strides toward Inclusivity in the Cosmetic Industry, Cynthia M. Frisby 
• Annie Malone and Poro College: Building an empire of beauty in St Louis, Missouri from 1915-1930. Chajuana V Trawick.

A history of dieting (and why it’s the worst!)

Fun fact: dieting does not work! Research tell us that the majority of people who diet, don’t only gain back weight, but actually put more weight on than they started with.

And yet, every year millions of us get on that diet band wagon looking for a quick fix. This isn’t a modern thing, it’s a tale as old as time. So let’s look back down the annals of history and try and find out why dieting is so prevalent and what our ancestors used to do (plus there’s some really gnarly dieting techniques here, so if you’ve ever done one of those horrific detox teas, this will make you feel better about your life choices!)

Example of a weight loss advert for Korein, in 1915 the pill was found to contain 60% petroleum and 40% sassafras oil (now banned for consumption in the US due to its toxicity)

In Ancient Greece, it was understood that being overweight contributed to a lot of health issues. Greek physician, Hippocrates, actually wrote in his collection of medical work, the Hippocratic Corpus, that people carrying extra weight may experience conditions like (what we now know as) sleep apnea. He also outlines how bring overweight often means you die earlier and in general when it comes to obesity, the ‘danger is great’.

To combat this Hippocrates advised that Greeks taking on a ‘diaita’ (the Ancient Green term that diet stems from btw) not only make changes to the food they ate, but to their lifestyle as a whole.

Incorporating more exercise, drinking less alcohol and more water and eating lighter meals with a range of fruit and veg. So far so good, in fact, dare I say, it actually sounds kind of smart…

And right there is where Hippocrates health advice falls off a cliff.

You see, Hippocrates also advised:

• ‘Violent exercise; such as running long distances to the point of exhaustion
• Abstaining from sex while trying to lose weight
• sleeping on a plank of wood
• Frequently making yourself vomit

There’s a lot to unpack there. First, let’s all agree that the no sex and whole plank thing are awful ideas. But more importantly, all that advice is not only ill advised but incredibly dangerous!

Hippocrates, you may be the father of modern medicine, but your diet advice is far out of line my friend

Like Hippocrates, a lot of early sources around diet, didn’t call for people to lose weight as a way to look good, but because it was important for their health. 1558’s The art of living long, was written by Venetian merchant, Luigi Cornaro, who had previously been so overweight his health was in jeopardy. Cornaro advocated for a stripping back a diet to the necessary (though he still allowed fourteen ounces of wine a day).

London undertaker turned diet guru, William Banting had a similar story. His obesity had meant he was in and out of hospital, so after losing weight he published ‘A letter on Corpulance‘ in 1863, primarily as a way to flag up why losing weight was healthy and to tell people about the diet he’d used.

This letter blew up (seriously, it basically went viral) and soon Banting’s high fat, high protien and low carb diet was spreading like wildfire. In fact it was so popular that ‘Banting’ became Victorian slang for dieting (as in ‘sorry Fanny, that spotted dick looks great but I’m afraid I’m banting today.‘)

Interestingly Banting is still being flogged to dieters today (though tbh, I wouldn’t recommend as a long term plan) image from Wellcome collection

It’s also in the Victorian era that we start to see a real rise of diets being sold as a necessity to be attractive. Want to achieve that teeny tiny waist? Well girl, don’t just get a corset, get a tape worm!

That’s right. A tape worm. A flat parasitic worm that lives in your gut and can grow up to 25 metres. Yeah, knowingly ingest a pill to get one of those, so you can lose weight.

Victorian beauty standards were harsh, as one Beauty bible, ‘The Ugly Girl Papers‘ (jesus, what a name) put it:

‘It is a woman’s business to be beautiful’

Women were expected to have a healthy appetite and yet also be approperialty thin with a waspish waist. That is a hard balancing act! Made even worse when there were countless advertisements popping up telling you that one magic little pill could make you thin with zero side effects.

But of course there were side effects! It’s a parasitic worm people! One of the biggest issues was getting the tape worm out. You see, tape worms like living in your stomach, its basically an all you can eat buffet for them, so why would they want to leave? But if left in there, things get deadly pretty quickly.

So to coax them out, people had to get a little creative. For example one Dr. Meyers of Sheffield used to lure the tape worm out by inserting a cylinder of food down a patients throat. This actually worked, but unfortunately sometimes his patients had a nasty habit of suffocating to death before the tape worm could be fully removed.

It’s because of incidents like this that the Victorian tape worm fad fell out of fashion. However it still remains a thing! With many desperate dieters heading to dark corners of the internet to buy tape worm pills. In fact on one episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, Khloe Kardashian managed to turn a whole new generation of people onto the parasite pills, with just once sentence! Saying:

‘I’d do anything to get a tape worm’.

Advert for tape worm pills. They be ‘jar packed’ and ‘easy to swallow,’ but they will mess up your insides!

Along with pills containing tape worms, Victorian women looking for a quick diet fix turned to arsenic pills.

Now, in this era, arsenic was used in everything! It was a cleaning aid, an ingredient in soft furnishings, it was used to make bright green fashion accessories and also occasionally used in a little light murder. So naturally some bright business person thought to market it as a diet aid.

But here’s the thing. Not all these pills actually said they contained arsenic. Some just advertised themselves as ‘diet pills’ or simply ‘wonder remedies’.

The pills worked by speeding up the metabolism and actually only contained a small amount of arsenic, that wasn’t enough to kill or do much damage. So whats the big deal? Well, it’s a diet pill. And what do people often do with diet pills? They take more than the advised amount. Which meant a lot of people giving themselves accidental arsenic poisoning.

But those weren’t the only diet pills on the market. There were a lot of options! With names like Dr Gordan’s Elegant pills, Corpu-slim and the very simple, Slim. These also contained incredibly dangerous ingredients, including dinitrophenol, an industrial chemical that can cause blindness, as well as thyroid ‘activating’ chemicals, which often resulted in long term heart issues.

Always trust a crudely drawn before and after image

It wasn’t all diet aids though. Way before Beyonce’s cayenne pepper ‘master cleanse’ and Tracey Andersons’s ‘baby food diet’, there was the Lord Byron diet. The mac daddy of celeb diets.

In 1816 famed poet Lord Byron lived on a thin slice of bread for breakfast, a few biscuits, soda water and copious quantities of cigars to keep the hunger pains at bay. He exercised in layers upon layers of winter coats in an attempt to sweat more and told friends he would rather not exist than ever be ‘fat’.

It’s now almost unanimously agreed on that Byron was suffering from severe anorexia, but in 1816 nobody knew that and so he became a diet icon.

Those desperate to get the pale and thin look sported by the huge pop culture icons that were Byron and his romantic poet set, eagerly took up highly publicised Byron ‘diet’.

The popularity and extreme nature of the diet was so much that it became a big talking point of the era. With Dr George Beard commenting that young women

‘live all their growing girlhood in semi-starvation… (for fear of)…incurring the horror of disciples of Lord Byron’

Lord Byron, painted by Thomas Phillips, 1816 – leader in terrible diets and child abandonment

Along with celeb diets, calorie counting also isn’t new. Sure it’s now moved onto apps, where we can just scan a bar-code and our phones do the rest, but for decades dieting by counting intake has been a thing. In 1918 Lulu Hunt Peters published, ‘Diet and health with key to calories’ and it became the first true bestselling book based solely on a diet.

Those eager to get that flapper thin up and down figure learnt from the book how to count everything that went through their lips. Sustaining themselves on 1,200 a day (or less)

It’s from here on out that we see the boom of diet blockbuster books and lives built entirely around working out if an apple still counts as 90 calories if it’s large.

Meet Lulu Hunt Peters, AKA the reason I spent years mathematically analysing food instead of enjoying it

Around the same time as calorie counting came the cigarette diet. For much of the early to mid 20th century, there weren’t advertising standards around selling cigarettes. So advertisers could say anything and oh boy, they sure did. Cigarettes were touted as everything from good for people with asthma, healthy, to (of course!) an amazing way to lose weight.

And technically, cigarettes are an appetite suppressant. But they also cause major medical issues and will kill you. So you know swings and roundabouts.

Though these health fears (and more stringent advertising rules that came in the 1960’s -thus the first excellent episode of Mad Men-) meant that the trend for smoking to lose weight fell out of fashion, it of course came back.

In the 1960’s the ‘model diet’ advocated smoking and drinking black coffee. And not much else. This lovely one somehow managed to linger in different forms throughout the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s!

Lucky strikes advert demonstrating the definition of subtlety

Now hopefully you’ve spent this whole article saying ‘my god, what was the past doing!?!‘. Which is good, and please never try any of these diet techniques.

But also, think before trying any diet – will this look ridiculous in 50 years? Because I can tell you right now, that diet lollipops, detox teas and 5:2 are all going to be fodder for some future snarky history writer.

So from me (someone who has a long history of hating my body and dieting) let me say this: The only time I have lost weight, sustained it and been happy, was when I:

A) Made gradual healthy lifestyle changes, which in time helped me find exercise I love, amazing food that’s good got my body and a better lifestyle that will hopefully mean I’m around to write random history articles for many years to come

B) Learnt to be OK with the body I have, not the body I hope to have

Hard truth, you can’t wait to be happy. You can’t pin everything on a future hypothetical perfect body. Life is way to short, and like tape worms, cigarettes, and arsenic pills, the diet ‘miracles’ that are popular now, might be messing your body up, making that life even shorter.

This was interesting where can I find out more? Calories and Corsets: A history of dieting over two thousand years, by Louise Foxtrot is a really fantastic read and massively helped with the research for this!

More like this

• A history of women’s underwear
• The insane ways women throughout history dealt with their periods
• Pin Ups: potted history

The Horrifying History of Hair Dye

Hair dye is by no means a new invention. In fact since early recorded history, people (particularly women) have been transforming their locks, just not in a way we – or anyone with even an ounce of sanity – would guess!

Rome: DIY Bleach and Horror  

In early Rome, it wasn’t uncommon for ladies to attempt to colour greying hair with a root touch up, because apparently women aging has never been ok.

Anyway for this grey be gone, a concuction of boiled walnut shells, ashes and, er, earthworms, would be ground together to form a lovely dark paste.

But it wasn’t just dark haired ladies getting in on the gross dying action, blondes were also having fun (groan)

Trust me, you’re not gonna wanna touch that hair when you find out how the Romans dyed it.

In this era, blonde hair was used to mark sex workers.

This was done either by using blonde wigs (taken from Germanic folk the Romans had handily invaded) OR by dying the hair.

Now if you thought earthworms were bad, then you’re going to want to strap in for the next bit, because all kinds of no.

To achieve blonde hair, a woman’s hair was slathered with anything from ashes to pigeon shit and then pissed on.

I know. I’m sorry.

BUT, this grimness does actually have some science behind it! See pee contains ammonia which acts as a bleach, which in turn, helps dye hair blonde.

Isn’t history the best?!? 

I’m sorry…it only gets worse from here

Elizabethan Pain and Price-tags 

Elizabeth I bought lip liner to the world, as well as using lead to lighten your skin (you win some you lose some) but it wasn’t just makeup that Lizzy was pioneering; she was also waaay ahead in the hair game!

A queen of iconic hair, it’s perhaps unsurprising that a lot of women in her court wanted in on Lizzys legendary locks.

And so ladies would pluck back their hairlines to achieve that trademark high Elizabethan forehead (ouch!)

But just look at that forehead, totes worth it

Colouring was also a big thing, with red and blonde both the beauty ideals of the day.

 

Blonde was achieved with a seriously expensive mix of cumin seeds, saffron, oil and celadine, effectively pricing anyone but noble borns from the faux blonde hair racket.

Still, you can’t knock a good false blonde down and women once again resorted to pissing on their heads to bleach the fuck out of their hair.

I’m sorry blondes, I promise this is probably the last mention of pee bleach.

Luckily, going red was a much nicer process.

Elizabethan ladies opted for henna, a method that is still really popular today.

Note: I’ve been dying my hair red for over a decade; the success rate of a decent colour using henna is like 0.0001%, so don’t be trying no Elizabethan dye jobs at Home.

The 1600s: It get’s better. I guess… 

In 1602, Sir Hugh Platt published, Delightes for Ladies; a handy guide of hints, tips and recipes for women. Hugh even included some hair care know how that didn’t suggest dead insects or piss as hair dye ingredients!

awwww, look how happy the blondes are!

But, don’t applaud just yet! 

 

Yeah. Turns out Hugh reeeally didn’t like women having hair; suggesting using sulphuric acid to dye their locks a fetching blonde.

Don’t worry though, Hugh makes it clear you shouldn’t touch the acid, just rub it all over your scalp. 👍

Thankfully by the end of the 1600s, wigs took over from highly dangerous chemicals.

These wigs not only allowed women to turn thier hair into towering pieces of ornate artwork, but also play with colour.

Marie Antoinette was a huge fan of pastels, with her wig collection looking a lot like a very hairy sweet shop!

Pastel hair and a flower crown!! Girls basically ready for Coachella

Sadly all pastel haired dreams must come to an end and the French Revolution did away with the trend for spectacular coloured wigs.

In its place was the Titus.

A groundbreaking short hair cut that both acted as a protest to the French Revolution and meant women didn’t have to spend hours piling on pounds of hair.

But sadly the Titus was all about looking natural, meaning hair dye was out…

Damn you the Titus’s simplistic natural beauty!!!

But then in 1856: Everything changed

A teenage science nerd called William Perkin was trying to synthesise quinine (a medicine now used to fight maleria) to impress his teacher. Because. Nerd.

Sadly, William totally failed.

BUT he did accidentally create a purple shade, which he dubbed Mauvine.

This was the first synthetic dye!

Mauvine went on to help medical research, build up the textile industry, create new types of food manufacturing and tons more!

But let’s be real, the real success here was opening up hair to a whole rainbow of chemical colours!

By the 1920s women were all over chemical hair dyes!

Sure you left the salon with a burning scalp, but your hair was really pretty, so fair trade right?

OBVIOUSLY NO

Messing around chemicals is a dangerous game. Then putting that mess on your head is basically asking to be maimed.

Nobody is a better testimont to this than Hollywood star, Jean Harlow

Hair so good, it doesn’t even move

Jean Harlow’s nickname was, The Platinum Blonde.

This meant, that as well as acting, being the blondest blonde in Hollywood was basically Jeans number 1 priority.

But this was no easy feat. Nobody was naturally that blonde.

So Jean went to extreme lengths to reach her famed platinum hue.

According to Alfred Pagano, Jeans hairdresser:

“We used peroxide, ammonia, Clorox, and Lux flakes! Can you believe that?”

No Alfred I can’t believe that!

Mainly because mixing literal household bleach (Clorox) and ammonia creates a highly noxious gas which can ultimately lead to kidney failure.

Jeans hair was dyed using this deadly deadly mess ONCE A WEEK FOR YEARS.

How is that shit even legal???!!!???

Thousands upon thousands of women attempted DIY versions of Jeans famous platinum dye recipe, with sales of bleach and ammonia sky rocketing

Thankfully the trend was short lived.

Jeans hair all fell out, which meant she stopped dying it and went to wigs.

But the deadly dyes effects remained.

Jean died of kidney failure aged 26. It was a slow and painful death: almost certainly down to her famed hair dye recipe.

Jean Harlow: Literally killed by marketing

Mercifully, Jean was one of hair dyes last casualties.

By the 1950s mainstream brands like L’Oréal were selling hair dye that dyed hair blonde by lightening, rather than replying on bleach, or you know…piss.

The following decades were defined by hair colour, from the bright colours of the 1980s to the highlights of the 1990s and early 00s (oh hey ‘The Rachel’!)

Now it’s estimated around 70% of women dye their hair , which is pretty unsurprising when you release what a historic love affair we’ve had with colour (and that we know longer need pee to be on trend!)

This was interesting, where can I find out more? Fashions in Hair, the first 5000 years, by Richard Colson is a cracking book. But its retail price is mighty expensive, so best bet for that one is checking out your local library!

Another great (and affordable…) read is Face Paint, The Story of Make Up, by Louise Eldridge, which looks at historic beauty trends.

 

Trying Lipsticks through history

For the next 4 days I’m going to try out lipsticks from history. From The 1300s to the 1940’s, I’ll be testing them all. On my lips…

Via giphy

I’ll admit to being something of a lipstick junkie, to the extent I have a small chest of drawers to hold all my lip products (yes it’s an addiction, but it’s not meth-so back off!) But it’s not just me that’s obsessed with lipstick; It’s a trend that’s endured throughout history.

Via giphy

Lipstick itself dates back to Queen Schub-ad or Puabi of Ur (if you can pronounce that then you get a gold star!) who was a Sumerian ruler from around 2500 B.C.

This first lipstick was more of a lip stain and was made from pretty much anything as long as it was highly pigmented and could be smeared on your lips. Popular ingredients included lead (this will be a recurring theme), fish scales, crushed rocks and dung.

Now I will do a lot of things for history, but putting lead and literal shit on my face is not one of them. So let’s call Egyptian lippy a write off and move onto the next stage in our tour of historic lippery:

The Middle Ages

Throughout the middle ages several European countries including France and Spain embraced rouge and lip paint; however England was having none of this – and of course by England, I mean the English church.

The church were not fans of make up on women, in fact women who wore makeup were considered ‘reincarnations of Satan’ which seems a tad strong.

But there were no actual laws banning makeup, which resulted in a very fine balancing act and the popular look of  ‘makeup that wont piss of your priest’. So slightly tinted lips-ok. Full on red lips – your going straight to hell young lady.

One of the most popular methods to get those slightly tinted but not too tinted lips was crushing up flowers petals.

There’s something weirdly romantic about the idea of flowers as lip tint. It feels very Shakespearean, very feminine, very ‘oh don’t mind me just off to go skip through this meadow wearing a daisy crown’…

If you can’t tell, I was excited to try this out.

Making the flower lip stain was really easy, all I did was get some flowers (I got tulips, because for some reason none of the shops near me sold anything but them and because tulips..two lips…get it) and then ground them up and popped them onto my lips.

The result:

Now if you are wondering, where the fuck is the flower stain? You are not alone.

If I am being generous I’ll say that it maybe stained my lips a bit. But let’s be honest – its basically one shade up from the shade your lips should probably be if you’re not dying.

Which admittedly in the Middle Ages is a win.

Would I try this again? No. The colour payoff is not worth the taste of ground flowers on your lips (which is not nice FYI); get a tinted lip balm and leave this lipstick in the dark ages where it belongs.

I give this 0.5/5.

Elizabethan 

By the Elizabethan period English people were onboard the lipstick bandwagon; led by Elizabeth l who loved a bit of lippy.

Red lip on point

Now when I say loved, I mean LOVED. Elizabeth pioneered the first known lip liner (made of red dye and plaster of paris) and was never without a slick of red lipstick.

She actually believed it to have healing powers and it is said that when she died she had lipstick an inch thick embedded onto her lips.

This is something I can get behind. As someone who lives for a matte lip, the idea of lip products burrowing into every lip crevice is neither new nor scary. If anything I was pretty pumped to try out Liz’s own lip recipe

via giphy

Elizabeth I used cochineal, gum arabic, egg whites and vermillion for her statement lip.

For those not up on their deadly beauty ingredients, Vermillion is a red pigment obtained from mercury sulphide – basically its toxic as F and I won’t be putting it on my face.

To make up for this, I used a bit more cochineal than the original recipe would have used (cochineal is a powdered insect used in most red dyes; including food dye, yum!).

So I mixed up my cochineal, gum Arabic and egg whites until I got a bright red lip…mousse…thing.

With that weird mess prepared I moved onto the lip liner, becuase as any self respecting lipstick addict will tell you, liner is the key to a flawless red lip.

I mixed some red dye (a mix of cochineal and beetroot) with plaster of Paris and once it had turned into a liquid… I realised I didn’t know what to do next.

Yup totally nailed it. via giphy

Yeeeah, I hadn’t really thought the lip liner through… but luckily the internet exists! Sadly I couldn’t find any tutorials on making plaster of paris lip pencils.

But fortunately I am a women of many skills, so I macgyvered a plaster of Paris mold using a straw and some tin foil.

Ta Da!! And my art teacher said I had no artistic talent, pffft!

Unfortunately after the lip liner had set I tried to remove it and it immediately broke into roughly 5000 pieces.

The finished product! 

I’m optimistically calling the shards of liner, ‘travel sized’

How did it apply?

I applied the lip liner first and it immediately tore the fuckity out my lips.

Don’t use plaster of Paris as a lip liner guys, just don’t. It didn’t even leave a colour, just pain.

After that ordeal I applied the lipstick/mousse.

The result: 

Defined lines for daaaaaays

Yeah….It looks like I’ve been punched in the mouth.

Also, no I didn’t have a fit whilst applying this, it just spreads out like that. It might be because of the egg white – which FYI tightens the bejesus out of the skin around your mouth! That’s why my lips are clamped shut in that picture-I couldn’t move them without cracking the skin of my lips (niiiiiice)

On the upside it’s a good red hue, I bet if you used vermillion it would be stunning and only slightly toxic!

Would you use this again?

Not if you paid me! If beauty is pain, this is straight up bullshit.

I give this -2/5 (yup we’re two in and already on negatives!)

Let’s move on…

17th century

After the clusterfuck that was Elizabethan lipstick I’ve moved across the pond to America for my next foray into historic lipstick.

America had a somewhat tempistoous relationship with lipstick during this period. In Pennsylvania it was actually legal to divorce your wife if she had worn lipstick during your courtship, was this was seen as conning a man into marriage.

Yet Americas first First Lady loved lipstick. Martha Washington even had her own unique recipe for the lippy she wore everyday. So naturally I had to check it out.

You can’t really see but Martha’s totally rocking some ‘my lips but better’ lippy.

Martha’s recipe consisted of: lard, almond oil, raisins, sugar, balsam, Alkanet root and spermaceti.

Spermaceti is a waxy substance found inside a sperm whales head, so for obvious reasons (e.g the law and ethics) I won’t be including this.

So, sans whale head goo, let’s make this lipstick!

I first had to prep the alkanet root, which is a root which naturally produces both red and purple pigments. To get the red dye I had to steep the root in vodka and water for a week. That my friends is dedication.

After this I mixed in all the other ingredients and then, as Martha would have done, ground the shit out of it.

The finished product

Mmmm, cannot wait to get this on my lips

It looked super gross, and it smelled a lot like really wet and musky bark. But at least it had a colour and didn’t contain plaster of paris or egg whites, so my lips were hopefully safe!

The result 

Colour wise there isn’t a huge payoff, but there is a clear red tint in there. Admittedly not much, but this does work as a red tint for people scared of red lips. Which makes sense. For a statement lip in a climate where half your country hates makeup, I think this is about as bold as Martha could go.

The main issue was the grease.

Now shocker…lard is greasy, but lard mixed with oil and baslm is a whole other level of greasy. The grease did make my lips shiny (win) but it also made them incredibly heavy and about 10 mins in some of the lipstick glooped onto my shirt. That’s just not what you want.

Would you use this again? 

Well first, let me share a fun fact: You may have noticed that my skin in the above image is not filtered, whilst the other images are – that is because I tried this historic lipstick out first and the lard and oil immediately broke me out to a point where I couldn’t show my skin to the internet. So to answer the question, no, no I would not use this again.

I give this 1/5 

 

The Blitz

At the start of World War Two British women were urged to keep up appearances and ensure they maintained a glamorous look at all times.

Hitler was not a fan of makeup (or anything fun) so the allies saw brightly made up women as ‘good for the morale of the nation’.

This of course meant lashings of  lipstick.

Makeup brands happily played into this, releasing fun compacts in the shape of military paraphernalia and and lipstick packaged in patriotic shades.

Look how cool!!!!!!

But then rationing hit cosmetics like it did everything else. Yet the expectation for women to retain high make up standards remained. Now one tube of lippy needed to last!

So women came up with ingenious ways to get colourd lips when they were between tubes of the good stuff. One such method was rubbing beetroot directly onto the lips for a wartime friendly lip stain.

Meet nature’s answer to MAC

Now, I was quietly confident about this. After doing a quick Pinterest search, I found tons of women who all swore by beetroot lip stains and had the cherry lips to prove it.

Admittedly these women all also used other ingredients (e.g. coconut oil) and as this isn’t strictly 1940’s, I’d just be rocking raw beetroot- but still Pinterest wouldn’t lie to me…..right?

It turns out that Pinterest is a filthy liar.

I TRUSTED YOU!!! 

Ok, fine. I might be being a tad harsh. It’s been a tough few days.

Did it stain my lips? Yes. But not in the way I was expecting it too. I was expecting a cherry pop pout and what I got was a pinky hue, which was nice… but lets be honest; thus colour is not worth the many many minutes of beetroot based effort I put in. 

The stain does last all day, which for a Land Girl on the go is ideal; no touch ups required. And the end product doesn’t look out of place with lip stains you can buy today, win!

However– it is pretty drying (not egg white drying, but still) so like the women of the 40’s you do want to keep some Vaseline on you for moisture and shine.

Would I use this again? 

It takes a while to get the colour pay off that picture shows and after about a minute of rubbing a raw beetroot onto your lips you do start to question your life choices. Not to the level of ‘why I am rubbing lard and gum arabic onto my lips’…but an existential crisis none the less.

I give this 3/5 Personally, a mini breakdown everyday is a price too high for slightly stained lips. But if you are crazy mentally strong or on rations this does the job. 

So thats the historic lipstick testing done, what did I learn?

1. Elizabethan lipstick doesn’t beat MAC. 
2. Plaster of Paris is evil incarnate 
3. Egg white is the devils own creation 
4. Petals do fuck all 
5. Lard does actually give you spots
6. It turns out progress happens for a reason and historic make up sucks.

   

   Now I’m off to drink wine and forget this ordeal ever happened!

This was really interesting, where can I find out more? I’d suggest checking out this paper on the history of lipsticks in Western Seats of Power, it’s also a Harvard paper, so you can read it and feel all fancy and intellectual.

What it means to dress like a woman

Women’s clothing is currently somewhat of a hot button issue thanks to Presidents Trumps suggestion that his female staffers ensure that when they attend work they ‘dress like a woman’

Of course this is far from the first time the way women dress has been the topic of public debate and it won’t be the last. Discussing and dissecting women’s clothing is something of a historic tradition, with many aspects of what it is to dress like a women having remained the same for centuries

Beauty is pain

To be beautiful is to be in pain, a fact anybody who has ever worn heels for more than 3 hours can attest to (time to bust out the gel heel pads every woman in Trumps office!) This is of course nothing new, from bruise inducing heavy fabrics to mantuas that required hinges to allow for the wearer to get into and out of carriages (and don’t even start on managing doors!)

Being really bloody uncomfortable goes part in parcel with being on trend. Of course these trends have also proved deadly. Yes the thing that makes you beautiful can also be a weapon. Corsets of course are famed for their organ mangling powers but crinolines were also a very lethal culprit.

so so so very deadly

Unsuspecting wearers would catch themselves on a candle and the whole crinoline would go up in flames. To make matters worse the crinolines design prevented the victim from putting the fire out themselves and any crinoline clad bystanders were also hampered down by their large skirts and rendered powerless to help- all they could do would be to watch their friend burn alive within their dress.  In 1864 one Dr Lancaster reported a supposed 2,500 people in London alone suffered this fiery end. This seems a little steep, still, I can’t think of a worse fate but please feel free to put answers on a postcard- or the comments…whatever.

This actually happened in 1861 in Philadelphia, 9 ballerinas died. Crinoline fires, argubaly worse than chip pan fires

You are what you wear 

When you read any book about the wives of Henry Vlll you will quickly realise the wives hoods are an indicator of who they are as people. Anne Boleyn with her rule breaking and saucy French hood, Jane Seymour trying to appease with her plain and ungainly English hood etc etc etc. The clothes are packaged as an integral part of these women’s core identity.

Even executions of women in this period turn into a (blood soaked) runway. Catherine Howard newly conservative but still glamorous in dark velvet, Lady Jane Grey pious in black and Mary Queen of Scots working rebellious martyr chic in crimson.  What you wear is who you are, even if that could not be further from the truth.

Margaret Cavendish, forerunner of Science Fiction, poet and one of the first philosophers to really dive into if the gender divide was maligned by her peers. She was seen as a bimbo.

Cavendish loved fashion and dressed vividly and eccentricly. Samuel Pepys described her as ‘conceited and ridiculous’ and her ‘dress so antic’. One of the greatest minds of her time overlooked, because her dress was a bit out there. But don’t worry, Pepys also describes her as a ‘good comely woman’ so everything’s fine really.

The sex is in the heel

If you are a woman then at some point you will have been told that you are dressing too provocatively (you bitch) or not provocatively enough (you bitch). Yes the debate on putting it away vs putting it out there is long and aged and something everyone apparently has some kind of stake in.

What is permitted for women to wear is somewhat cyclical. There is fine line between what is seen as ‘attractive’ and ‘slutty’ but it is a line that keeps on fucking running all over the pitch.

For example, if you were a woman in the court of Charles ll then your neckline would be low to the extent that nipple paint would be a thing in your life – go and find any portrait of a bright young thing of this court and you will find an image of a woman barely containing her breasts (if they arnt just out and roaming free) it seems like the birth place of liberal love for the raw female form, free the nipple and all that…but for the love of christ don’t show an ankle, because a naked breast was one thing but a naked ankle was seen as scandal itself.

Mistress of Charles ll, Hortense Mancini

Sexual fetishization was also ripe in Victorian England. What we now think of as the a bastion of sexual repression was actually incredibly sex obsessed (seriously Victorians LOVED their porn). But like today sexuality was a nuanced minefield.

Take our old friend the corset, it was seen as key to maintaining the ideal female figure- a waspish waist, curvy hips and breasts. A narrative was created around this fashion- it became a sign that you were a someone, feminine, rich, desirable, demure and sophisticated all at once. Yet at the same time the corset became a symbol of loose morals- it pushed up the cleavage and alluded to the hips and vagina.

Wear it…but don’t go too far. It is much the same as a short skirt – one thing on a Jennifer Lawrence type (elegant, fashionable and daring yet somehow sophisticated) and another entirely on a reality TV star (tacky, most likely taken as an up skirt shot when entering a club).

To dress like a woman is a myth and one far more complicated than I have been able to touch on in this (another time perhaps). It is an ever changing goal post built on cultural expectations and outdated stereotypes. It exists…it clearly very much still exists (hey again Mr President!) but it doesn’t have to be something we adhere to. We can look at history and notice the rule breakers, the women that created their own fashions and lived how they choose – what I’m saying is, don’t feel like you have to wear heels and a pencil skirt to the office because someone berk in a shit wig tells you too.