Victorian-era women ate arsenic as a beauty treatment.

In the United States and Europe, a ghostly pallor was the height of fashion among Victorian-era women. Pale skin signaled high class, both because it meant that you never had to work in the sun and because wasting away from consumption, what we now know as tuberculosis, had become associated with beauty in certain affluent circles. In the late 18th century, wealthy women started romanticizing the extreme thinness, near-translucent skin, and rosy cheeks of those who suffered from the disease, an attitude that came to a peak in the mid-19th century. Tuberculosis, while devastating, brought out features that some already considered attractive, and beautiful women were, falsely, even thought to have been particularly vulnerable to the illness. Women chasing the fashion wore tight corsets and full skirts to show off their tiny waists and made their faces as pale as possible. And if …Read More

Source: Victorian-era women ate arsenic as a beauty treatment. — History Facts