Medieval beauty
(In which I
discover the aesthetic conventions of the middle ages and attempt to try them
myself, using my own makeup.)
My
knowledge of medieval fashion and beauty is based largely on pop culture (when
I typed ‘medieval hair’ into Google images, there was a lot of Cersei
Lannister), so this probably won’t be totally accurate but I’ll do my best.
Before I
start, I should say that I am at two significant disadvantages with this task:
1) The people of the medieval age
favoured blonde hair, which I don’t have.
2) They also preferred clear skin, and
I have a lot of freckles and moles on my face. They would probably have thought
I was a witch.
Apparently
scrubbing your face with an amethyst got rid of blemishes, but they don’t sell
those in Boots, so I just used cream concealer. I then attempted to cover up my
freckles with concealer stick; I didn’t quite succeed, but they are less
noticeable. I also used lemon juice to make my lips pinker, which is supposedly
authentic. Also painful.
Hair-wise,
I made three braids on either side of my head, then pinned them in a loop
together at the back. While my hair is quite long by modern standards, it isn’t
as long as would have been usual in the middle ages, so I couldn’t do as
intricate a pattern as I would have liked. I then did four more braids in the
lower part of my hair, just for added decoration. I didn’t straighten my hair
before styling it because it wouldn’t have been an option at the time, although
according to Alex, I have ‘English’ hair anyway, which basically means it’s
wavy and kind of fluffy.
This is my
face sans makeup and my natural hair:
And this is
the finished product:
I hope you
enjoyed my (slightly haphazard) attempt at medieval beauty!
Information from:
http://mentalfloss.com/article/55276/17-signs-youd-qualify-witch-1692
http://www.xovain.com/how-to/medieval-beauty-tips
