Bizarre Facts About Strange Historical Beauty Practices
"There is no exquisite beauty…without some strangeness in the proportion." —Edgar Allan Poe
They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and nothing seems truer when looking back at the lengths we have gone to in the name of fashion.
Strange Historical Beauty Practices Facts
24. A Hairy Obsession
The pre-Revolution French court was famous for its extravagance. In addition to opulent garments, aristocrats also dabbled in some gravity-defying hairdos.
Reported to go as high as 1 1/2 times the height of a person’s face, pyramidic wigs adorned women’s heads, and were decorated full of cushions, pins, and feathers.
23. Oxygen Is Overrated
Although the hourglass figure has always held a special appeal across Western cultures, the Victorians took their obsession to a whole new level in their use of corsets. These waist-cinching devices, while successful in achieving a "wasp waist,"
had some major health repercussions. Besides causing fainting spells, which the era’s ladies unsurprisingly became famous for, the restriction on women’s lungs likely worsened potentially deadly ailments like pneumonia and tuberculosis.
22. Between A Rock and A Hard Place
The early 1900s' “hobble skirt” bound a women’s legs together, resulting in slow, mincing steps and a flute-like silhouette. The fashion is aptly named considering that “hobbling”
is also the term used for restraining farm animals by the same method. In lighter news, designer Paul Poiret meant for the hobble skirt to be an alternative to the corset, so women only had to choose between breathing or walking.
