The Poisonous Cosmetics Victorian Women Used To Look Beautiful

Contrary to popular belief, this whole poison-in-the-face thing didn’t start with the Victorians; instead, it began even further back. Ancient Egyptian royalty lined their eyes with kohl, a black powder that contained lead, which they believed protected them from illness and marked their high status.

Victorian beauty prized skin so pale it looked almost see-through. It became the beauty standard because it led people to assume that you were wealthy enough to never work outdoors in the sun, so being pale basically equated to privilege. But the wild thing is, it just made them look like they were dying from tuberculosis.

Modern historians push back on the old idea that these were just silly women poisoning themselves out of vanity. In a world where women had almost no power, beauty offered status, influence, and a bit of control. It was essentially their way of asserting their place in society.

Women coated their faces in a white lead-based paint, and the more it damaged their skin, the more they had to pile on to hide the damage. It was a vicious cycle in a jar. One step forward, three steps back!

The most famous lead-makeup wearer was Queen Elizabeth I. After smallpox scarred her face in 1562, she covered herself in a thick white lead paint called Venetian ceruse. Some historians believe her death years later may have been partly caused by lead poisoning.

Modern scientists actually recreated these old recipes to test them further. The simple lead-and-vinegar mix said to be used by Elizabeth I let far more lead pass through the skin than other formulas. So her particular blend was actually one of the worst possible versions.

Once a woman painted on her lead makeup, she often had to keep her expression still, since heavy layers of the paint could flake or crack with too much movement. It’s basically a more horrible version of what we call a caked-up face.

When done right, lead actually gives a soft, subtle, almost dewy finish, blurring blemishes the way modern foundation does. So you can’t exactly blame women for continuing to use it, especially once they learned how to work around its downsides.

Now on to skincare: Victorians used mercury to zap their spots. A compound called bichloride of mercury was recommended to kill blemishes — though it was just as capable of harming the person wearing it. But as you know by now, the Victorians were nothing if not committed!

To try to regrow lost eyelashes, people also mixed mercury with lard and rubbed it right along the edges of their eyelids. Yep, toxic mercury straight into your eyes!

The red-tinted cosmetics popular in the era were frequently made from mercury sulfide, also known as cinnabar or vermilion. So a rosy lip or cheek could also be injecting mercury into your skin. As a lippie and blush enthusiast, I’m so glad I have much safer options now!

Victorians could buy arsenic “complexion wafers,” sold in catalogs and by druggists, that you literally ate to get pale, clear skin. The arsenic made them pale by destroying their red blood cells. All those “sick Victorian children” jokes and memes basically have some truth to them!

In parts of Bohemia, women reportedly bathed in arsenic-rich hot springs to lighten their entire body (not just their face, mind you).

There was no way the damage from all this arsenic wasn’t severe. The long-term use could cause kidney and nervous system damage, hair loss, strange skin growths, discoloration, among many things, death included. So during that time, if you saw someone glowing, they were basically doomed.

I like the appearance of dreamy, watery, wide eyes in editorial photos, but in the past, women actually did this by putting belladonna (also called “deadly nightshade,” if that helps) drops directly into their eyes. And as the name suggests, using it over time could actually make you go blind.

The Victorian version of lash extensions is not for the faint of heart either. Accounts from 1899 describe a technician washing a liquid cocaine solution over the eyelid and inner rim as a numbing agent, then threading hairs plucked from your head through a sewing needle and stitching them onto your lash line.

There was also an old hair-removal recipe that used potassium nitrate, which is essentially the same stuff now found in fireworks and rocket fuel. Besides possibly emitting poisonous gas, it could catch fire if you got too close to an oil lamp. So your leg-hair treatment came with a small but very possible chance of bursting into flames.

In the early 20th century, radium became the trendy wonder ingredient, added to face creams and even hair and dental products to give a “radiant” glow. One French brand even packed its cosmetics with radioactive material. People swapped one deadly ingredient for another, always chasing that magic glow. We really don’t learn, do we?

Victorians used the same toxic arsenic used in cosmetics to dye their dresses and wallpaper in a bright green color. One chemist calculated that a single green ball gown could hold nearly half its weight in arsenic and shed a lethal dose in one evening. Between your makeup, your gown, and your walls, a fashionable Victorian was basically marinating in poison.

Victorians weren’t clueless about any of this! They knew. But they simply decided beauty was worth the risk. Every era basically has its “worth it” poison, and come to think of it, we still have a lot of that today, just more subtle!

This content was created with the help of AI.