When it comes to the fight to look ferociously good, the ancient saying”no pain, no gain”has now peeled more true. From waxing legs and tweezing eyebrows to scrabble pedicures, surgical facelifts, skin needling, and liposuction, painful beauty trends are all too common.
Notwithstanding spendy, time- consuming, and uncomfortable multitudinous contemporary beauty trends may be, nonetheless (hello Kylie Jenner lip challenge) we can at least rest safe in the knowledge that they are not normally life- overhanging. The stenchy paint we are swiping on or the contouring we are perfecting are not really landing us in hospitals, right?
But the same can not be said of the restrictive, skin-scratchy crinolines of the Puritanical period or the lung- constricting corsets introduced in the 16th century (famed for their competency to produce indigestion, constipation, breathing difficulties, and yea internal bleeding). Likewise, the searches for fair skin and society- placating womanly frames have been littered with painful threats for thousands of stretches. Health and fista shares 8 Most Painful Beauty Trends Throughout History.
1. The Tasty Tapeworm Diet
How do you banish fat,”the foe that’s docking your life?”Why, with”sanitized tapeworms, jar packed,”of course. So was the engaging tagline attached to an old-world tapeworm diet advertising placard, which endorsed the supposed benefits of consuming tapeworms to stay trim without modifying your food input or exercise jurisdiction.
Funnily enough, The Tapeworm Diet also came with some unfortunate downsides. According to the BBC, after swallowing a number of tapeworm excrescences in lozenge form ( either enduring a nice bout of retching and diarrhea to reach their asked weight) the lucky overeater would either need to excrete the tapeworm, which could lead to abdominal and rectal complications.
As BBC reported, the ingested tapeworm could also grow up to 30 bottoms in length, and in doing so, induce a range of health problems from headaches and eye issues to epilepsy, meningitis, and yea madness. Thankfully, the Tapeworm Diet is officially banned in multiple western countries now, including theU.S. and UK. Multiplex investigators claim it was a myth; and to be honest, I naively hope that it was.
2. The Magical Beauty Micrometer
Enthralled by the magic of wonder- product blushes, foundations, and blushes? Well, it turns out that when it comes to on- point makeup employment, belongings used to be enhanced through one vital product: The Beauty Micrometer. According to this antique advert, it was perfected by Max Factor in 1934. This hideous appliance was designed to” verbatim register actors’ facial bulks, and disclose which features should be reduced or enhanced in the makeup process.”
Allowed you were likeA-OK with the way your face looked? Not on the Micrometer’s watch. As the advert reads,” Blemishes fair discreet to the ordinary eye come blatant contortions when thrown across the screen.”Not only were the screws hourly grievously tight, but just allowed for all the cerebral damage.
3. Tooth Blackening
In complete contrast to the contemporary aspiration for an impeccably blanched set of teeth, tooth aspersing or”Ohaguro”is the custom of dyeing your teeth black. It was exercised in Japan as an aristocratic sign of beauty for hundreds of cycles, from the Kofun until the end of the Meiji period. Teeth were ordinarily blackened as a coming-of- age ritual, in particular for adolescent women.
The process was long and killing, took around a week, and necessitated multiple plays of dangerous chemicals to a child’s teeth every day. Although lacquering teeth in this way did pose the benefit of helping to forestall tooth decay, wearers would hourly suffer really painful antipathetic replies to the chemicals, leading to the interdicting of the practice in 1870 by the Japanese government.
4. Arsenic Consumption
Want to recreate the delusion of eight hours of placid slumber after a gin-fueled night? Let me introduce you to the 19th century trend of Arsenic eating. According to Mental Floss, it was consumed to produce”a blooming complexion, a brilliant eye, and an appearance of fattiness” (aka busty).
The Arsenic diet was a regular fingerprint in any complexion- appreciating Prim gormandizers depot. Yea though it could lead to arsenic poisoning and symptoms correspond as diarrhea, hurling, bloody pee, cramping muscles, hair loss, stomach pain, and paroxysms.
The diet also came with some really important rules. Mental Floss went on to report that arsenic should only be taken when the moon increases in size; you should start by taking just one capsule a time (until you fabricate up a resistance); and either way you could no longer stop taking the poison medicinal unless you wanted to die.
5. Nadir Slat
China Snapshots/ Getty Images News/ Getty Images Studied to have started in Imperial China among upper class court prom in the 10th and 11th centuries, nadir slat ultimately spread to all classes, and was seen as a way of displaying status. The fizzling wobbling, doll-suchlike walk suggested the person was too well-to-do and ultra expensive to shoulder mass-produced work.
In a bid to transfigure the bounded bottoms into” golden lotuses,” mommies would fold the toes of their 2- space-old toddlers under their bottoms and tie them as tightly as possible. The process was extremely painful, and permanently crippled the wearer. Notwithstanding, bottom tape was not fully blacked out until the Communist Revolution in 1949. To this day, multiple older Chinese women suffer the influences of the practice.
6. Lead Face Cosmetics
In the 16th and 17th centuries, a variety of distempers were replete, yea for the rich of people. Yea if you managed to navigate your way to majority without succumbing to illness, you’d probably still have a mass of hoodoo scars to show for it. Women saw these hoodoo scars as unbeautiful faults, and the cheapest way to cover said faults was by using a presiding face cosmetics, allegedly made popular by Queen Elizabeth I according to New York Magazine.
In addition to being affordable, the cosmetics was quick and easy to make, handed yea content, and had a silky matte finish. Notwithstanding, lengthened use also caused brain lump, palsy, and ultimately multiple organ failure. I guess you can’t win ’em all.
7. Deadly Nightshade Eye Drops
Known to Italian women as”Belladonna”or”beautiful woman”in the 19th century, women would squeeze eye drops prepared from the deadly nightshade works directly into their eyes to dilate their pupils, giving the fantasy of wide-eyed innocence and innocence. Unfortunately, your beauty would’ve come at a price. Namely, heart pulses, loss of the competency to rivet on close objects, and ultimately complete blindness.
8. Lysol Douching
You likely lean on Lysol to keep your toilet and kitchen spick and span. So why not employ the same style to your nether regions? According to Jezebel, condoms and diaphragms were priceless and thorny to adduce during the first half of the 20th century. So sloshing was ordinarily proclaimed as a cheap and effective preference.