
Who doesn’t want to look beautiful? Among them, women put more effort and desire to beautify their outer appearance than men. This is not something that happened very recently. Since ancient times, women have used various tricks to make themselves beautiful, especially at times when science was not so advanced.
Ancient Greeks and Romans used animal excrement to beautify their bodies. They believed that the excrement from reptiles has the power to rejuvenate the body. Therefore, Greek and Roman women applied a mixture of mud and reptile excrement on their body and performed this care for hours until their body became young with a mysterious power.
Crocodile excrement has been used in many cases for this reptile excrement. This is one of the ugliest tricks used by the people to beautify themselves in history and no one is said to have been harmed by this care.
The custom of leg binding was another ritual in China until the 20th century. Here, the bones of women’s legs are broken and wrapped with bandages. This is done between the ages of four and nine years, because at that time the bones of the leg are more easily broken.
Leg binding
This was popularised in China by a woman named Yao Niang who performed dances for the Chinese emperor in the 10th century. She danced in front of the Chinese emperor with her legs tied with bandages and tiptoes. Seeing this, other women began to imitate her, and it became popular in China from then on.
This custom has been a Chinese symbol of beauty ever since. Due to this leg binding, women have had long-term disability and it is difficult to walk and do work on their own. Therefore, they needed servants. Servants belong to relatively rich families. Therefore, this ritual is also used to display one’s wealth.
Marie Curie and Pierre Curie discovered radium in 1898 which is also a great achievement in the scientific field. Radium is a radioactive element. Exposure to the radiation emitted by this is harmful to the body. In the early days, radium was used in various fields including for cosmetic purposes. Cosmetic companies used this for their products and advertised it by promising to provide ‘radiant skin’.
In 1933, Dr. Alexis Mossali, along with Dr. Alfred Curie, began developing French radioactive cosmetic products. These products were called ‘Tho-Radia’ and products such as skin creams, lip balms, toothpastes and powders were manufactured using radium. They said that this was how to beautify the body scientifically.
Egyptian toothpaste
The ancient Egyptians first used toothpaste. The toothpaste they used was not the same as today. They consisted of pumice, small pieces of volcanic rock and vinegar. After that, it was the ancient Romans who tried to keep their teeth healthy.
They are said to have used human urine for that. They thought that Portuguese urine had more teeth-whitening power than Roman urine. Therefore, they have transported the urine of the Portuguese to Rome by ships.
After the fall of Rome, their method of whitening their teeth also died out. Looking at this action by the ancient Romans, there is also some scientific background. Urine contains ammonia which is a widely-used cleaning compound. Even today, the toothpastes contain ammonia to whiten the teeth.
Also, lips are one of the most sensitive parts of a woman’s body. When you see a woman wearing lipstick among people, it’s almost an unconscious thing to glance at her. The Sumerian civilisation is credited with being the pioneers of lipstick. They crushed gemstones and mixed them with honey to make lip balms. Then we find lipstick in the Egyptian civilisation.
For the first time, they have mixed sea plants, bromine and iodine to produce lip tints in an incredible variety of colours. After that, in the Egyptian civilisation, during the reign of Cleopatra, she made a special coloured lipstick from the juice obtained from crushing poisonous beetles. Producing these has not been an easy task. It takes over 70,000 poisonous beetles to produce one pound of this special, uniquely coloured lipstick.