Old Apuleius once said that if Venus had not been blonde, the gods would not have fallen in love with her. And this is the whole Roman approach to beauty. Their ideal was sickeningly blonde. The ideal woman was supposed to be blonde with fair skin, wrapped in transparent silk, hung with gold. Around her were supposed to run equally blond children and scurry fair-haired slaves. And somewhere in the background was supposed to loom a man in a white toga, who was paying for this whole feast, informs Ukr.Media.
If the Greeks went crazy for athletic physique, the Romans were pragmatic. Their beauty always had a very specific connotation – a successful marriage and status.
Take skin, for example. A tan meant only one thing: you worked in the fields. An aristocrat had to be as pale as marble, because her only interaction with the sun was the occasional ray that filtered through the expensive curtains in her villa. So anything went. Nero's wife, Poppaea Sabina, loved donkey milk baths so much that she took whole herds of these unfortunate animals with her on trips.
By the way, if you read somewhere that Roman women drank wood alcohol to look pale, forget it. I don't know who came up with it, but in Ancient Rome they didn't know how to extract alcohol, and even if they had tried, they wouldn't have had time to become beautiful, because they would have thrown off their hooves after the first sip. Roman women were obsessed with appearance, but they certainly weren't suicidal.
But what they were actually poisoning themselves with was lead whitewash. It turned their skin gray and covered them with ulcers, but instead of throwing the can away, the women simply applied an even thicker layer. Doesn't that remind you of anything?
They also had to play with their hair. Brunettes, in order to keep up with the trends, had to grease their heads with a mixture of goat fat and beechwood ash, and then sit in the sun for hours. To keep their faces from getting tanned, they wore something like a bag with a hole in the top of their heads. If their hair fell out from such executions, they could always buy a wig. The best option was to cut it off the head of some captured German woman. It's convenient when your empire is constantly at war with someone.
Today we pay for salons, but in Rome they bought the masters themselves. The term “ars ornatrix” meant the art of decoration, and specialists in this field cost a lot of money. A slave makeup artist or hairdresser could cost more than a strong gladiator. Rich matrons did not go to public baths at all – they had a staff of a hundred girls working at home, who did nothing but pluck, oil and rub their mistress.
The figure also had to meet expectations. Excessive thinness was not welcome. The Romans wanted to see in front of them the future mother of their heirs, so the hips had to be wide, and the gait – smooth and majestic. No fuss. A woman had to carry herself as if she already owned half of this world.
And, by the way, they really owned. While men were fighting endless wars, Roman widows calmly ran businesses, bought real estate and managed huge fortunes.
So the next time you're waiting for your wife to get ready for dinner, or you see the check for her grooming, just breathe a sigh of relief. Be glad you don't have to buy her a slave hairdresser, or a hundred donkeys grazing in your yard for her evening bath. Oh, and there's no more lead in the powder.
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Roman women poisoned themselves with lead for status, and we with fillers and filters. Is the “perfect” facade worth such sacrifices?
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👑 Beauty is worth everything 🌿 Health is a priority 🤔 Everything is good in moderation
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