Regulated Bodies: Cosmetics and Hygiene in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

In the course of the late eighteenth century, Christian anthropology and natural history forfeited their interpretive power over the human body to the modern natural sciences, which produced not only a firm belief in science but also a body conceived in scientific terms.¹ Thus, the public critique of makeup was no longer based solely on moral arguments but on the findings of modern physiology and pharmacology. That skin breathes, transpires, and has to be cleaned with water was a known fact, along with the toxic effects of mercury, white lead, and vermilion. The “dry toilet” was therefore doubly criticized: for impeding skin metabolism, as well as for leading to symptoms of disease such as “lead colic,” “consumption,” “neurasthenia,” and the “disintegration and corruption of the blood mass.”² Given these assumptions, the production of beauty was geared to scientific principles and underwent scientification.