Ten Beauty Facts That Blew Our Minds!

by BR Kellie

The Beauty Crew love a good bit of trivia. A little knowledge. A morsel of information that can be squirrelled away to be used at a quiz night or as a conversation piece when chatter has stalled. From scientific quirks to Hollywood gossip, we adore it all. But you know what really floats our boats? Beauty trivia. The wilder, the weirder, the more unexpected the better! Here's ten tidbits that really blew our minds!

Skin looking a little dull? These days we'd pop a mask on containing anything from Vitamin C to hyaluronic acid to give it a boost, but back in the days of ancient Greece, those who wanted to boost their appearance applied a mask using crocodile faeces. Heck, they even bathed in it. That's not a mask I'll be snapping up anytime soon.

Using belladonna, also known as deadly nightshade, to create eyedrops might make your eyes appear bigger but, being that its a toxic plant, doing so is a really bad idea. Immediate use can distort your vision, and regular use could wreck your vision - potentially even causing blindness - permanently. That's a hard pass.

Back in the days of Marie 'let them eat cake' Antoinette, it was considered the thing to do to draw over your veins with a blue pencil in order to further emphasise your pale skin. That's a revolutionary beauty tip right there.

Having only just managed to healthily lose my Covid lockdown kgs through regular exercise and not eating all the chocolate, lollies and chips in the world, it appears that the simpler answer would have been to smash back a tapeworm, as was the rage back in the early 1900s, and let that do the job. (Please note, I'm being entirely sarcastic and eating a tapeworm is not recommended.)

The obsession with pale skin continues...

Back in Victorian times women would bathe in arsenic in order to lighten their skin... literally dying for beauty.

Got a little period pain? Pop a bit of dirt in your gob and she'll be right. 

Yeah, nah. Perhaps those who subscribed to this method of menstrual pain management thought the dirt would suck the pain away, and considering the practice of eating clay has been noted by scientists in many parts of the world, both in historical and modern times, there might be something in it, but considering the toxins dirt can carry we wouldn't recommend it. Ibuprofen and/or a hot water bottle for the win.

How much money do people spend on waxing, plucking and threading in order to remove the brow hair that sprouts between their brows? They would've been the envy of many back in the days of ancient Greece when people glued animal fur to their faces in order to create a unibrow.

As a member of the five finger forehead club it makes me happy to see that my sumptously sized noggin was all the rage back in the Middle Ages. So much so that women would remove their eyebrows and trim their lashes to make their forehead appear even larger.

Currently I'm using a toothpaste that claims to remove fifteen years of staining, so it really does blow my mind that over a thousand years ago Japanese women would blacken their teeth in the name of beauty (and as a sign of wealth). I guess that's one way to cover the coffee and tea stains...

Not into ebony gnashers? A simple urine mouthwash will keep those pearlers in perfect condition. Yes, this was a thing back in the Ancient Roman days where both animal and human urine was swished about one's mouth in order to whiten teeth. While it sounds gross, the science backs the process due to the presense of ammonia which is a known lifter of stains. It may work, but it's a wee bit out of my comfort zone.

Do tell... Which beauty fact blew your mind? And are there other beauty facts we need to know about? 

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