There were many beauty trends and routines that came and vanished over the years. Take your eyebrows for example. A few hundred years ago people preferred light eyebrows. But then again in the 1920s, thick ones picked people’s interest. The same thing happened to other beauty trends too.
But every once in a while, people definitely picked and shown interest in some really spooky beauty trends that might give you chills nowadays. For example, taking poison for clear skin or bird waste for a facemask.
In this article, we’re going to discuss the top five bizarre beauty routines that people ever followed.
So, let’s dive in…
The Attempt To Look Pale
Some people really like tanned skin while others go for paler skin colors. And in the overall history of Europe, people preferred pale skin tone so much that they would have gone to any extent to achieve it. But why did European people of ancient times were after this pale look so much?
The reason is simple. The pale look of your face meant that you’re from a noble and wealthy family. And because noble people didn’t have to spend their days working in the sun, their skin must be paler than usual.
However, what’s really bizarre is the way they achieved this pale look on their face. They used to attach leeches at the back of their ears. The leeches would then suck out blood from their faces giving them a paler complexion. And they would then repeat the process once they got their usual complexion back. So much for looking wealthy…
Strange Mouthwashes
There is no denying that we all have tried all sorts of bizarre products that get a fresher breath and white teeth. But would you every try human liquids for it? Of course not, right. Well, the ancient Romans actually used human liquids to get white teeth. In fact, they were so hell-bent to get whiter teeth that they would import urine of Portuguese people for that.
But why Portuguese people?
That’s because the ancient Romans believed that the pure urine of a Portuguese has the best ability to whiten someone’s teeth. It was so popular that the Roman Emperor Nero levied tax in it. The amazing thing is that the ammonia found in urine really does have tooth whitening potential. And we still use it in modern toothpaste and mouthwash. Of course, the source is less weird than this.
The Wish Of Blonde Hair
Yeah, blonde hair is beautiful. But how obsessive can people be over it? Well, ask this to Europeans of the Middle Ages. At that time, most people wanted their hair to be as blonde as possible. The main motivation behind this was to look like angels. As nearly all the angels were portrayed to have blonde hair, people wanted their hair to be blonde too.
Finally, the people of Scandinavia and Germans came up with a unique solution to this: adding opals to their hair locks.
As opal shows all the colors of the rainbow, people considered it to be lucky to have opal and that it’s a mystical object. They believed that if they wear opal with their hair locks, then their hair would always retain the golden blonde color and shine.
Ingesting Tapeworms
It’s been rumored that many people intentionally ingested tapeworms in order to lose weight and look slimmer. In older times, many women were really obsessive to achieve a small waist. And to do that, they did go through several bizarre beauty routines and processes. But the most disturbing and bizarre one of them is ingesting a tablet containing tapeworm which will eventually grow inside their body.
And once they lose enough weight, they used to take another tablet that would have killed the tapeworm inside them and remove it. And if they really grew tapeworm inside their body to lose weight, then many of them risked suffering from dementia and epilepsy. Of course, that is if the tapeworm doesn’t grow too much to choke them from inside.
Bathing In Blood
Just when we thought that beauty routines can’t get any bizarre and spooky than the other four in this list, we have got Countess Elizabeth Bathory, the Blood Countess. According to the legends, the Blood Countess used to take bloodbath in order to stay young and remain beautiful. This woman ruled over Slovakia, a small part of Europe where people believed that she captured many young and beautiful girls, killed them, and took bathe in their blood. All of it was to remain young and beautiful.
And if the rumors are true, she might have killed up to 650 young women in her reign just to perform the bloodbath ritual. However, the Blood Countess was eventually captured while performing her unusually spooky beauty routine and held responsible for the disappearance of the girls. The moral is, no matter how effective a beauty routine is, if that means killing people, you should definitely refrain from it.
