Cosmetics | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

Cosmetics

Cosmetics are personal care products used to improve one's appearance by cleansing, conditioning, or coloring the body or face. Today cosmetics include soaps, shampoos, conditioning products for hair and skin as well as lipstick, blush, eyeshadow, and other make-up for the face.

Archaeological evidence found at paleolithic sites indicates that prehistoric peoples used various pigments mixed with grease to adorn not only the walls of their caves but also their bodies. Body painting, in addition to being considered ornamental, was thought to afford supernatural protection, and at some burial sites, large quantities of paints have been found interred with the dead. Among the seventeen different colors that archaeologists have identified as in use in prehistoric times, white, black, orange, red, and yellow seem to have been the most popular.

Both historical records and archaeological evidence show that the ancient peoples of the Middle East, like prehistoric peoples, used cosmetics for aesthetic as well as religious purposes. Their lavish use of eye cosmetics seems to have served the additional purpose of warding off the glare of the sun. Eye cosmetics included an eyeliner made from ground ants' eggs and kohl, a paste made from soot, antimony, or galena (a type of lead ore) that was applied to the eyelashes, lids, and brows. Two famous Egyptian queens who adorned themselves in this manner were Nefertiti (c. 1365 B.C.) and, much later, Cleopatra (c. 50 B.C.). Also in common use among the upper classes of Egypt were rouges, henna for dying hair and fingernails, white powders, bath oils, and abrasives for cleaning teeth. The oldest cosmetic item that archaeologists have found in the Middle East is one in common use today--lipstick. Dating from about 4000 B.C., it was found in a Babylonian tomb and in all likelihood belonged to a man.

Although the word cosmetics is derived from the Greek kosmetikos, meaning "skilled in decorating," the classical Greeks apparently frowned on the use of cosmetics. Similarly, the early Romans regarded cosmetics as a sign of decadence. With the rise of the Roman Empire, however, and the ensuing abundance of luxurious goods imported from the conquered lands of the Middle East, cosmetics became status symbols for Romans of both sexes. In his castigating comments to one of his female friends, Martial, a Roman of the late first century a.d., gives some flavor of the use of cosmetics in his day: "While you, Galla, are at home, your hair is being dressed at the hairdressers; though you lay aside your teeth at night with your silk garments...though even your face does not sleep with you, and you ogle me from under eyebrows which are brought to you in the morning... nevertheless, you offer me delights."

Throughout Europe, Roman concepts of personal cleanliness and beauty waned as the Empire went into decline, and they did not re-emerge until the Crusaders began returning from the Holy Land in the Middle Ages. The medieval ideal of feminine beauty--skin white as a lily and cheeks of rosy red--was pursued by nobility and commoners alike. But while the ruling class could afford expensive cosmetic preparations, their subjects had to whiten their skin with wheat flour and rouge their cheeks with beet juice. By the 1500s, the French had become famous for their skill in applying cosmetics. High-born men and women powdered their hair with saffron, or flower pollen, and painted their faces with "supernatural luster," a preparation of gold leaf and hot lemon juice. Venice, however, was the major producer of cosmetics. A skin whitener known as Venetian ceruse was very popular, even though it was known that the white lead it contained could damage the skin and result in baldness or even death. Other dangerous concoctions included red mercuric sulfide, used for lipstick, and sulfuric acid, used for bleaching hair.

Cosmetics enjoyed heightened popularity in eighteenth-century Europe, where members of the French court whitened their faces and etched the veins of their faces in blue. Beauty patches of black silk or velvet, originally invented as small dots or crescents to hide the disfiguring marks of smallpox, became larger and took the form of flowers, stars, birds, and symbols of personal occupation and politics. In England powdered wigs and reddened lips were in fashion.

With the French Revolution and the dawn of the Victorian Age, cosmetics again went into decline. Men eschewed them, and respectable women adhered to the Victorian ideal of a "natural" beauty; anything more than a dab of rice powder or scent was the province of the streetwalker.

But by the late 1800s, advertising was coming into its own, and with it printed testimonials of cosmetic preparations by famous women--such as the endorsement of Pear's Soap by the English actress Lillie Langtry--respectable women again began experimenting with cosmetics. It was not until the 1920s, however, when motion pictures and movie stars were becoming the rage, that cosmetics started growing into the multibillion dollar industry that it is today.

Two entrepreneurs who contributed significantly to the rise of the cosmetics trade were Elizabeth Arden (1884-1966) and Helena Rubenstein (1870-1965), whose rivalry became as well known to Americans as the Hatfield-McCoy feud. Born in Poland, Helena Rubenstein emigrated to Australia in 1902 with a fair complexion and 12 pots of her mother's face cream, the invention of a European chemist. Australian women were so impressed with Rubenstein's skin that she was finally persuaded to open a small beauty shop in Melbourne. By 1908, she had fashionable salons in London and Paris. In 1915, with World War I underway, she fled to the United States, where she opened salons in New York, Boston, Massachusetts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and San Francisco, California. In the "flapper" era that followed the war, she created the vamp look for the movie actress Theda Bara (1890-1955). Madame, as Rubenstein was known, died in 1965 at the age of 94, leaving an estate valued at more than $130 million.

Elizabeth Arden's career was as meteoric as that of Rubenstein. Born into a family of British immigrants in rural Ontario, Canada, probably in 1878, Arden (nee Florence Nightingale Graham) rose from her impoverished childhood to become one of the wealthiest women in the world. At one time, she operated more than 100 salons on three continents. Although early in her career she tutored herself by having a facial at almost every salon in Paris, even at that stage she would not deign to patronize the salon of her archrival Rubenstein. In 1938, in one memorable episode, Arden hired away a dozen members of Rubenstein's New York salon. Not to be outdone, Madame retaliated by hiring Arden's former husband and business partner, Thomas Jenkins Lewis. Despite--or perhaps helped by--such well-publicized skirmishes, the modern cosmetics industry continued to grow.

Over the last 50 years, cosmetic scientists have developed advanced techniques for caring for and decorating the skin. For example, state of the art skin cleansers and moisturizers can now help minimize external signs of aging while color cosmetics are longer lasting and available in more shades than ever before. Further aided by improvements in mass production, packaging, and advertising, the cosmetic industry has become a multibillion dollars enterprise in the 1990s. Nonetheless, the industry continues to be challenged by environmental and ethical concerns. One such challenge came as a result of laws passed by certain state legislatures which limited the solvents (Volatile Organic Compounds) that can be used in hair sprays. Another came from the animal rights movement which has pressured the industry to produce cruelty free cosmetics which do not involve animal testing.