The Things People Used To Do (and Still Do) To Their Faces In The Name of Beauty

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It was believed in the 1600s that wealth and power were signified by the paleness of one's skin that was untouched by the rays of the sun. To this extent, the affluent including Queen Elizabeth used extreme measures to maintain the right kind of pallor, including using a poisonous mixture of white lead and vinegar, as well as drawing blood to achieve that faint colour.

The first evidence of the use of the facial mask dated back in 1875, when a woman from Ohio in the US, who went by the name of Madame Helen M Rowley, patented what was called the toilet mask, which in her patent was described as a 'Mask for Medical Purposes'. Made of flexible India rubber and made to be worn while asleep, the mask's purpose was to beautify, bleach and preserve the complexion. Despite the fact that further in her patent, Madame Rowley described her mask as a "medium which prevents the escape by evaporation of the cutaneous transpiration (sic) that acts as a bleaching agent", the mask fell out of favour because it simply encouraged perspiration and also suffocated the pores of the skin. 

With the discovery of radium in the 1900s, the radioactive chemical was used by cosmetics companies in their products. Apparently, salon appointments were booked almost on a day-to-day basis so that women of the time would put masks infused with radium that promised to restore smoothness, among others. Of course, this treatment fell out of favour, too, as it only brought health problems to the salon-goers. 

The first effective modern sunscreen was invented in 1946 by the Swiss chemist Franz Greiter. Before that, those who had freckles on their face resorted to a rather painful spot removing treatment invented by Italian physician Dr M. Matarassoa in which carbon monoxide was used to freeze off freckles with a sharp needle. Ouch!

In the 1950s, the most popular facial treatment came with the advent of the television, thus encouraging women, mainly housewives, to seek that glowing healthy skin, was the facial steam, which is still in use today.

Nowadays, there's the vampire facial, made famous by Kim Kardashian, which mixes your own blood with Restylane or Juvederm. Apparently, this mask enhances a younger and firmer skin. Reminds us what rich people in the 1600s did. Guess Kim Kardashian took a leaf out this macabre book. Victoria Beckham uses a rather unhygienic type of facial that apparently were used by the Geisha in medieval Japan: bird poop. Guess people, especially women, would use anything to get youthful skin. 

Sources: eonline.com, beautifulwithbrains.com