Victorian Beauty Advice

PERSONAL BEAUTY. 

 Treating of the Care of the Skin, Hair, Teeth, and Eyes, so as to have each arrive at the highest degree of beauty of which each is capable. 

A great object of importance, of care to every lady, is the care of her complexion. There is nothing more pleasing to the eye than a delicate, smooth skin; and besides being pleasing to the eye, is an evidence of health, and gives additional grace to the most regular features. The choice of soaps has considerable influence in promoting and maintaining this desideratum. These should invariably be selected of the finest kinds, and used sparingly, and never with cold water, for the alkali which, more or less, mingles in the composition of all soaps has an undoubted tendency to irritate a delicate skin; warm water excites a gentle perspiration, thereby assisting the skin to throw off those natural secretions which, if allowed to remain, are likely to accumulate below the skin and produce roughness, pimples, and even eruptions of an obstinate and unpleasant character. Those soaps which ensure a moderate fairness and flexibility of the skin are the most desirable for regular use. 

Pomades, when properly prepared, contribute in an especial manner to preserve the softness and elasticity of the skin, their effect being of an emollient and congenial nature; and, moreover, they can be applied on retiring to rest, when their effects are not liable to be disturbed by the action of the atmosphere, muscular exertions or nervous influences. 

The use of paints has been very correctly characterized as “a species of corporeal hypocrisy as subversive of delicacy of mind as it is of the natural complexion,” and has been, of late years, discarded at the toilette of every lady. 

The use of cosmetics has been common in all ages and in every land. Scripture itself records the painting of Jezebel; and Ezekiel, the prophet, speaks of the eye-painting common among the women; and Jeremiah, of rending the face with painting—a most expressive term for the destruction of beauty by such means. For the surest destroyers of real beauty are its simulators. The usurper destroys the rightful sovereign. 

That paint can ever deceive people, or really add beauty for more than the duration of an acted charade or play, when “distance lends enchantment to the view,” is a delusion; but it is one into which women of all times and nations have fallen—from the painted Indian squaw to the rouged and powdered denizen of London or Paris. 

Milk was the favorite cosmetic of the ladies of ancient Rome. They applied plasters of bread and ass's milk to their faces at night, and washed them off with milk in the morning. 

As a cosmetic, milk would be harmless, but we doubt its power of improving the skin. As a beverage, no doubt, it whitens the complexion more than any other food.