CHENNAI: If you wanna be my lover, you have got to… watch the entirety of Pride and Prejudice (2005, 2004, 2003, 1995, 1940 etc.) and know all the underlying subtext of each scene with the director’s commentary and bonus points if you have actually read the novel. I’m sorry but that’s the way it is. I don’t think I’m asking for much. You know…I’m a modern woman, who likes to believe that she is quite self-sufficient — I just can’t help it though! The minute you stick an early 1800s love story with dancing and chaste flirtation and handsome men walking across fields in the early morning mist telling me that I have bewitched them body and soul — I want to do something drastic.
There is something about beauty in that era which I find so fascinating. Women would make themselves look like they had just come out of a fever hallucination: watery eyes, pale skin, flushed cheeks, with make-up worn only to emphasise these features. Which is why, according to several accounts, diseases like Tuberculosis were considered beautiful. The symptoms were in line with the aspects of femininity that were considered desirable — delicate, fragile and prone to fainting in the arms of suitable men.
Where are my smelling salts anyway? Apart from diseases, women would achieve said state of being by skin washes made from ammonia, rose water and radium (radioactive material, totally normal for the time). Arson wafers were consumed to create clear complexions which, I suppose, is like taking your fish oil and omegas…just you know, poisonous. Mercury would be rubbed onto eyelashes to help lengthen them, and poisonous plants like belladonna were used to help dilate the eyes and make them bright and watery.
Some of these have a Pinterest- fail feel to it (looking at you, burnt bread for eyeliner) and some of them were just downright dangerous. Some of them are just hilarious, like this one: according to a book written in 1858 by Lola Montez, women were to keep their skin youthful and brilliant by binding thin slices of raw beef to their faces. If your boyfriend thought sheet masks were creepy, he has another thing coming his way.
A few centuries later it seems obvious that these things shouldn’t be done, but it really makes me sit up and think — what in our beauty routine is going to sound like the equivalent to radium baths and poison drops in our eyes? My guesses are that the concept of “purging” is going to be on the list. On days when it feels annoying to put on sunscreen, we should remember what our foremothers had to sign up for in the name of beauty. Anyway, in the true spirit of everything, Miss Austen had to live through: I hope this column finds you well. I hope it finds you in possession of good fortune and in want of a wife, husband, friend, partner or pet cat. Thank God for science and evolving gender norms!
SAUMYA R CHAWLA
@pixie.secrets
The writer loves to over-share, drink wine & watch period dramas