Dangers of Early Makeup

Picture a woman bent over her recipe book, preparing a lotion. She stirs in the usual ingredients: oil, rose water, and distilled water. She dips a finger in the mixture and rubs it onto her hand, sniffing. Satisfied, she is ready to add the last ingredient. She picks up a small flask and sprinkles in a silvery, metallic liquid: mercury. She hums a tune as she finishes, not knowing that with the addition of mercury her lotion is now poisonous.

In order to achieve the desired pale skin, women used homemade skin-whitening cosmetics, which often contained harmful ingredients, such as belladonna, lead, mercury, and even arsenic. Ironically, contemporary self-help books advised women to manufacture their own products, saying patent cosmetics have “ruined the finest complexions, induced diseases...and prematurely ended the days of their victims.”[1] However, women mixed poisonous ingredients into their homemade beauty products. Among the most alarming recipes was the frighteningly-named "Arsenical Cosmic Lotion."[2] The results of these cosmetics were devastating and included everything from muscle paralysis[3] to skin ulcers to death.[4]

In addition to making toxic cosmetics, women purchased them. For example, soon after the Civil War, lotions like "Bloom of Youth," a lead-based whitening lotion, started to show up in medical case records.[5] Indeed, "Bloom of Youth" disabled three women who had used about one bottle a month for two to three years.[6] Suffering what is now called radical nerve palsy, the three women’s arms were paralyzed, and one’s hands “were wasted to a skeleton.”[7] Fortunately, with proper medical care, all three women recovered.[8] However, "Bloom of Youth" remained in stores. In the 1880s, a "Bloom of Youth" advertisement even claimed that the U. S. Board of Health had tested it and deemed it safe for use.[9] Unfortunately, documenting the link between medical conditions and cosmetic use was difficult because women rarely admitted to cosmetic use and would only do so when their condition worsened.[10] One cannot know how many women, other than the three who appear in medical records, suffered because of "Bloom of Youth."

[1] Lola Montez, The Arts of Beauty; or, Secrets of a Ladies Toilet, (New York: Dick & Fitzgerald, 1858) xii.

[2] Ella Adelia Fletcher, The Woman Beautiful (New York: Brentano’s Publishers, 1901) 189.

[3] “A History of Cosmetics from Ancient Times,” Cosmetics Info, assessed November 20, 2016, http://www.cosmeticsinfo.org/Ancient-history-cosmetics.

[4] “The History of Makeup,” The Beauty Bite, assessed November 20, 2016, http://thebeautybite.com/the-history-of-makeup.html.

[5] Kathy Peiss, Hope in a Jar, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011) 41.

[6] Alison Matthews David, Fashion Victims, (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015) 23.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Peiss, Hope in a Jar.