Suffering for beauty has ancient roots

[Philosophia]

Suffering for beauty has ancient roots

Lead in your lipstick? Mercury in your mascara? Recent headlines about harmful ingredients hiding in beauty products are enough to make even the vainest among us want to go back to the good old days of rubbing strawberries on our lips to make them red.

But women (and men) have plastered a lot more than berry juice onto their skin in the never-ending quest to look hot (or extremely pallid, as was usually the case back in the day). Some beauty products of yesteryear contained high concentrations of lead, mercury, arsenic, even radiation, thanks to ignorance, indifference and narcissism.

For as long as humans have admired themselves in magazines, mirrors and murky pools of water, they’ve also had to contend with the ugly side of beauty.

From here (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22546056/).

This is an intriguing read into the history of cosmetics. Some of these products astound me.

[Eternal Night]

Woah I tell ya that is proper scary......

I love my make up and am a proper girly girl when it comes to putting on my war paint....

But some of them are just mental.

Men and women in ancient Greece took things a step further by slathering lead not just around their eyes, but all over their face. Their white lead face cream, according to a 2001 article in the journal Clinics in Dermatology, was designed to “clear complexions of blemishes and to improve the color and texture of the skin” and was such a big hit that lead-based face masks soon became all the rage

I mean lead all over their faces?! :rotfl:
But I guess it just goes to show how niave people were about the world and what it contains....
They didn't know anybetter and well I would never have thought that wearing something on your face would could lead to maddness or infetility...Black heads or dry skin at the most.

And cream out of Rat poison?! ~shakes head~

But it kinda reminds me of all the crazy things that were used to cure ailments.I mean the doctors were all nutbars as well!

[Eternal Night]

Also just to add it makes me think that we blame our obsession ith having to look good way too much on the modern day celebs....
It obviously runs deeper then that.........wen did we feel we had to start putting things such as lead and rat poison on our faces to better ourselves?
And what triggered this over the top obsession with looking perfect?