Dying to be White — The Toxic History of Skin Color
By: Carlyn Beccia
Tags: Beauty, Women, Feminism, History, Self

Dying to be White — The Toxic History of Skin Color

Women paid a high price for white skin

The Allegorical Portrait of Elizabeth I with Old Father Time | Unidentified painter / Public domain

I have always wished my skin was darker. As a teen, I would lather my body with baby oil and bake in the sun until my skin formed a sticky seal with the plastic beach chair. I hated every minute of it. Most women today spend hours trying to get that sun-kissed glow, but our ancestors would have found our bronzed skin hideous. Until the twentieth century, a tan was a sign that you were a laborer forced to work outside. A fashionable, aristocratic lady never exposed her delicate skin to the sun. Instead, she went to great lengths to get the half-dead parlor of someone about to swoon.

Unfortunately, most of the ingredients in cosmetics turned fair maidens into corpses.

In ancient Greece and Rome, women absorbed more toxic ingredients than your average lab rat. Noblewomen kept their skin pale by lathering their faces with a mixture of poisonous white lead and water. Sometimes they used chalk or crocodile dung, which was less corrosive, but…it’s still crocodile poop on your face. Sounds unpleasant.

Fair skin continued to be all the rage in medieval Europe. Most women just slapped a little flour and rosewater on their face and called it a day. Others placed a few leeches on their ear lobes, and voila…the blood drained from their face.

Queen Elizabeth I of England slathered her face with cerise — a lead and vinegar paste. Unfortunately, years of lead poisoning from her makeup left her skin with holes the size of craters, bad breath, and hair loss. It might have even killed her.

By the 17th century, women had discovered that the same ingredient used in rat poison could also whiten their faces. In 1625, one product called Aqua Toffana promised to have all the boys kissing your fair cheeks. They just had to survive a little arsenic poisoning. Aqua Toffana contained so much lethal arsenic that it killed over 600 amorous husbands.

Maria Gunning, Painter Unknown — after Francis Cotes (1726–1770) / Public domain

By the 18th century, you would think that cosmetics would be lead-free, but such was not the case. Women continued to slather on lead-based, white, makeup so thickly that they needed a special knife to scrape it off. In 1751, the reigning fashion celebrity, Maria Gunning set London on fire with her legendary beauty. Unfortunately, her face paint also set her liver on fire. At only 27, she died from lead poisoning caused by her makeup.

By the Victorian period, women still wanted to look like they were about to faint, but heavy makeup was so last century. Instead, they kept their faces scrubbed clean, but ate “Arsenic Complexion Wafers.” These wafers made women white by killing the hemoglobin in their blood, which eventually slowed the oxygen to their brains.

When cutting off the oxygen supply wasn’t enough, ladies could fall back on an old Gothic standby…bloodletting. Their doctor would cut a vein and let the blood drain out until they reached the appropriate shade of blood loss.

How tanned skin became the beauty ideal

If you prefer to be tan, you can thank cornflakes for starting that fashionable trend. The founder of the breakfast cereal, John Harvey Kellogg (1852–1943), was an American Medical doctor, renowned surgeon, and bona fide health nut. In an age when most ladies were lounging around eating tea and crumpets under lacey parasols, he told them to exercise and get some sun. Kellogg was so convinced that sunbathing would invigorate his patients that he invented an artificial sunbath that mimicked UV rays — a precursor to today’s tanning beds.

Radiant heat bath by John H. Kellogg at the USPTO museum — April 14, 1896 | Fuzheado / CC BY-SA

Flash forward thirty years later to the 1920s. Flapper girls flashed legs for the first time. Fashion icon Coco Chanel flaunts a horrible sunburn while vacationing on the French Riviera. And Josephine Baker sings her way into the hearts of Paris theaters goers as the “Bronze Venus.” Parisians adored these two dark-skinned lovelies. Soon, American fashion magazines followed the French’s lead and showed sun worshipers frolicking on beaches like Jersey shore girls. Being pale was out and the tan was in.

Josephine Baker in Banana Skirt from the Folies Bergère production “Un Vent de Folie” | Public Domain

Today, the suntan continues to be a symbol of health and wealth despite the indisputable drawbacks of skin cancer and early wrinkles. At least it beats lead and arsenic poisoning.