Ep. 15 Toxic Beauty: How We’ve Poisoned Ourselves for Centuries All in the Name of Beauty

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” or so they say. But, honestly that’s just not true. For all of known history beauty has been defined by society, not the beholder, and the standards have been set unattainably high. Pale and plump, tan and thin, long hair, now short hair, curly hair, straight hair, big hair, no hair, thick eyebrows, thin eyebrows, thick again, thin again, short, now tall, black teeth, no white teeth. Ever changing, swinging like a pendulum, back and forth, and ever harder and harder to actually achieve. But did you know our desperation to somehow reach these impossible standards has led us to, quite literally, poison ourselves throughout history? Let’s fix that.

Sources:

• Kallos Gallery "The Role of Kohl in Ancient Egypt"
• mylearning.org "Warding Off Evil"
• CDC "Health Effects of Lead Exposure"
• Medical News Today "Almost half of skin bleaching creams contain mercury"
• Duke University "Lead exposure in last century shrunk IQ scores of half of Americans"
• nobelprize.org "Women Who Changed Science"
• redcross.org "Marie Curie, the Red Cross, invisible light and WWI"
• International Museum of Surgical Science "X-Ray Hair Removal: Seeing Through the Beauty Industry"
• Forbes Magazine "6 Trends Shaping the Future of the $532B Beauty Industry"
• CDC "Researching Risks of Birth Defects Among Pregnant Nail Salon Workers and Hairdressers"
• The Cut "The Most Dangerous Beauty Through the Ages"
• National Geographic "Arsenic Pills and Lead Foundation: the History of Toxic Makeup"
• Global Founders London "Dangerous Beauty"
• a History Extra podcast episode about the history of beauty
• a For the Love of History podcast episode called “Beauty to die for"

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