by Fleur-de-Gigi
She had been the 18th century equivalent of Angelina Jolie; a
celebrity who caused men to faint in awe of her beauty. Maria Gunning
was the eldest of the four daughters of John Gunning of Castlecoote, Co.
Roscommon, Ireland, she and two of her sisters were known as the Three
Graces, becoming the focus of much attention in London in 1751 as they
headed to the capital to become actresses. They enjoyed superstar status
with Maria requiring a military escort to protect her from curious
onlookers when she went for daily strolls in Hyde Park. But it was Maria
Gunning’s beauty regime that led to her nasty demise, as the lead-based
make-up she insisted on plastering on daily resulted first in the loss
of her looks, then deadly blood poisoning.
The toxic make-up is said to have killed well-known actress Kitty
Fisher and even Elizabeth I, who was never seen without her whitened
‘mask of youth’. Maria was labelled the first victim of vanity when she
died aged 27 in 1760, her beloved face eaten away by acid. The noxious
effects of the lead caused Maria continued skin eruptions which just
encouraged her to powder her skin more vigorously to mask the blemishes.
She liked to use ceruse, a compound to whiten her skin composed of lead
oxide, hydroxide, and carbonate. The lead, unbeknown to her, was
poisonous, and the hydroxide and carbonate combined with the moisture in
her skin formed acids that slowly ate it away. To redden her lips, she
liked mercuric fucus, with the lead and mercury seeping into her blood
through the skin that slowly poisoned her.
Although her account is famous, the history of deadly makeup goes much much deeper in history.
Queen Elizabeth I was a user of ceruse, a mixture of white lead and
vinegar that was applied to the face to make the skin appear paler. One
of Shakespeare’s most popular sonnets pokes fun at the common metaphors
used to describe the ideal beauty:
“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun
Coral is far more fair then her lips fair
If snow be white, why then, her breast is dun,
If hair be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks…”
It is widely believed the queen died of blood poisoning at the age of
70 in 1603, possibly caused by the noxious ‘Mask of Youth’ she used to
achieve that snow white skin. Pale skin was a sign of wealth and class
in Elizabethan Britain. A variety of substances were used to make the
skin whiter, including ceruse. Ceruse, a lead mixture, was poisonous,
and the hydroxide and carbonate combined with the moisture in the skin
formed acids that slowly ate it away.
Even is earlier times pale skin was desired and achieved by cerussa,
a mixture of white lead and vinegar that was favored by the nobility
and by those who could afford it. This white foundation was applied to
the neck and bosom as well. The first record of this skin-whitener was
found in 1519 in Horman’s “Vulgaria puerorum”, and by the time of
Elizabeth’s reign was well-established as an essential item for the
fashionable woman. Naturally, spreading lead upon one’s skin caused a
variety of skin problems; some authors of the time warned against it,
describing how it made the skin “grey and shrivelled”, and suggesting
other popular mixtures such a paste of alum and tin ash, sulpher, and a
variety of foundations made using boiled egg white, talc, and other
white materials as a base. Egg white, uncooked, could also be used to
“glaze” the complexion, creating a smooth shell and helping to hide
wrinkles.
Once an ideal whiteness was achieved-sometimes complete with false
veins traced onto the skin-coloring was applied. Facepaint, generally
referred to in period as
fucus, came in a variety of reds and was
used mainly upon the cheeks and lips. Madder, cochineal, and
ochre-based compounds were all used as blush and lip-color, but
vermilion (mercuric sulfide) was the most popular choice of the
fashionable court lady. Apparently this color could be laid on quite
thick; One Elizabethan satirist commented that an artist needed no box
of paints to work, but merely a fashionably painted lady standing nearby
to use for pigments.
Ancient Egyptians may have been the first to plaster on killer
cosmetics. Their exaggerated eye makeup was made of malachite (a green
ore of copper), galena (lead sulfide), and, most famously, kohl, a paste
made of soot, fatty matter and metal (usually lead, antimony, manganese
or copper).
What, aside from chronic eye inflammation, would this mean for the average Egyptian?
“The exposure would eventually lead to irritability, insomnia and
mental decrease,” says Dr. Joel Schlessinger, a dermatologist in Omaha,
Neb. “The ocular skin is most likely to absorb materials due to its
thin, nearly transparent qualities. Couple this with the mucous
membranes being a hop, skip and a jump away from the area where
cosmetics are applied and you have a potentially serious problem.”
Men and women in ancient Greece took things a step further by
slathering lead not just around their eyes, but all over their face.
Their white lead face cream, according to a 2001 article in the journal
Clinics in Dermatology, was designed to “clear complexions of blemishes
and to improve the color and texture of the skin” and was such a big hit
that lead-based face masks soon became all the rage.
Despite lead’s health hazards, ranging from skin ruptures to madness
to infertility, upper-crust Romans went on to use white lead (or
cerussa, the key ingredient in those once-popular lead paints) to
lighten their faces, then topped that off with a bit of red lead (or
minium, currently used in the manufacture of batteries and rust-proof
paint) for that “healthy” rose glow. Lead was also a major ingredient in
the hair dyes of the day, either intentionally or otherwise. According
to scholars, the place was lousy with lead and some have conjectured
that lead-lined viaducts, cooking pots and wine vessels — and the
resultant poisoning — helped bring about the fall of the empire.
Of course, the use of white lead in ancient Rome paled in comparison
to the workout it got during the 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.
The “dead white” look was tres chic back then and as a result men and
women painted their faces with a mixture of white lead and vinegar,
peeled their skin with white lead and sublimate of mercury and used lead
sulfate to remove their freckles
According to Kevin Jones, curator at the Fashion Institute of Design
and Merchandising Museum in Los Angeles, the use of cosmetics packed
with lead, mercury, arsenic and other dangerous elements made for a
particularly vicious cycle. “People would put whitening on their skin
and over time, it would eat the skin away, causing all sorts of
scarring,” he says. “And the way they covered that up was to apply
thicker amounts of the makeup, which would then exacerbate the
situation. It was a horrible process — once you got started you couldn’t
stop.”
The worst, however, was not over. In 1869, the American Medical
Association published a paper entitled “Three Cases of Lead Palsy from
the Use of a Cosmetic Called ‘Laird’s Bloom of Youth’” which outlined
the symptoms (fatigue, weight loss, nausea, headaches, muscle atrophy,
paralysis, etc.) caused by the regular use of the much-touted skin
whitening lotion, advertised as a “delightful and harmless toilet
preparation” which, incidentally, contained lead acetate and carbonate.
Other popular blooms, balms, powders and potions of the 19th and early
20th century such as Berry’s Freckle Ointment, Milk of Roses, Snow White
Enamel and Flake White contained mercury, lead, carbolic acid, mercuric
chloride and a handful of other “delightful” corrosives.
In 1936, Ruth DeForest Lamb, chief education officer of the FDA,
published a collection of these tragic tales of botched beauty in her
book “American Chamber of Horrors,” a move that helped bring about the
eventual passage of the revamped Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938.
Among other things, the new law brought cosmetics and medical devices
under FDA control. Further safety measures followed, such as the FDA’s
1977 requirement that U.S. cosmetic manufacturers list ingredients on
the label.
“Back in the day, there were high acute exposures of lead in
cosmetics because they didn’t know better,” says Malkan, cofounder of
Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. “But we know better now and unfortunately,
there’s still lead in lipstick and mercury in some mascaras. We’re also
being exposed to chemicals like phthalates many times a day through
personal care products like shampoos, face creams, fragrances,
aftershaves, deodorants.”
The repeated cumulative exposures to multiple toxic chemicals is a
“different way to look at it than back in the day,” Malkan says, but
it’s “what we’re most worried about now.”
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