History's most painful fashion and beauty trends
From corsets to foot binding, lead makeup to skin bleaching, discover how fashion and beauty through history demanded pain, reinforced inequality, and shaped today’s toxic standards.
Image: Anita Bhagwandas
Anita Bhagwandas, journalist and author of UGLY; Why the world became beauty-obsessed and how to break free. In the following guest article, Anita explores the great (painful) lengths that our ancestors went through to conform to beuty standards. While some of these practices appear unbelievable, Anita concludes that they're not all too dissimilar from modern beauty trends.
Beauty has never been fair - and it was never meant to be. From whalebone corsets to lead-laced powders, from foot binding to skin bleaching, beauty and fashion have always had a price - and it’s one that’s rarely paid equally.
For centuries, the harshest demands have fallen on women, and even more so on women from marginalised communities. Whether in the courts of Renaissance Europe, the households of Imperial China, or the colonies of the British Empire, the body has been used as a canvas for status, control, and profit.
These ideals were never just about looking good. They were about signalling wealth, reinforcing class and racial hierarchies, and keeping power concentrated in the hands of a few. Pain, risk, and exclusion were built into the system - whether through laws dictating who could wear certain colours, or unspoken rules about who was allowed to be seen as beautiful at all.
Today, the tools have changed, but the blueprint remains. Social media filters, billion-dollar beauty industries, and globalised trends still target those same insecurities - often marketing the most extreme, expensive, or dangerous ideals to those least able to afford the risks. But this phenomenon isn't new; it comes from centuries of practices we’d see as unimaginable, and it has some eerie similarities to the beauty standards of today.
Cinch Till You Swoon: The Corset
Ever worn tight, uncomfortable shapewear? Its predecessor was the corset. From the 1500s onwards, this body-shaping, posture-altering garment became a mainstay of women’s fashion, after having a tiny waist became popular in the French Court. The structure was often made of as many as 100 whale bones, but when metal eyelets were introduced in the 1828 that’s when ‘tight lacing’ - or reducing the waist size dramatically to attain a popular hourglass figure - could cause compressed ribs, restricted breathing, affected digestion, elicited fainting in public.
Medical journal The Lancet warned of ‘Death From Tightlacing’ in 1890, but was also damning on women who didn’t maintain their shape using it; noting that married women weren't so affected because 'it was no longer necessary to charm his eye with the slender waist.'
Modern-day equivalents are certainly more comfortable, taking the form of tight-fitting shapewear and moulding underwear. But the exaggerated, often unattainable hourglass figure has become such a dominant Western beauty ideal that many now risk their lives chasing it through dangerous procedures like the Brazilian Butt Lift (BBL) - a surgery with the highest mortality rate of any cosmetic procedure.
White as Death: Lead Face Powder
From Queen Elizabeth I’s chalky visage to the powdered faces of 18th-century French courtiers, pale skin was more than a beauty choice - it was a class statement. A white, unblemished complexion signalled you lived a healthy life indoors, free from sun and manual labour. The quickest way to get it? Lead-based powder, most famously Venetian ceruse - a mix of white lead and vinegar that promised a porcelain finish.
Applied daily, it gave skin smoothness, by covering scars and smallpox marks. Which would be fine, except it is also absorbed into the bloodstream. The results weren’t subtle: blackened teeth, thinning hair, skin that cracked and ulcerated beneath the mask. Long-term use could cause nerve damage, paralysis, and, in extreme cases, death. Ironically, the product meant to create the illusion of health slowly destroyed it. But the deadly mix of harsh beauty standards and a society based on class and status caused women to keep using it.
Lead was gradually replaced by products like talc by the early 1900s, though in a full circle moment, the latter - a staple of many beauty and baby products - has now been labelled a carcinogen in Europe and is expected to be banned from beauty products from 2027.
Dressing by Decree: Sumptuary Laws
In medieval and Renaissance Europe, how you dressed wasn’t just a personal choice - it was a matter of law. Sumptuary laws were designed to control excess, but in reality they acted as a form of social gatekeeping, ensuring the visible markers of wealth stayed with the elite. These rules dictated who could wear certain fabrics, cuts, and colours. In England, the Statutes of Apparel of 1574 under Queen Elizabeth I forbade anyone below the rank of knight from wearing silk on their outer garments, while rich velvets, deep purples, and gold threads were reserved for nobility.
Sumptuary laws existed across Europe and beyond. In Renaissance Florence, for example, laws prohibited women outside the aristocracy from wearing pearls or more than a set number of gold rings. In Japan during the Edo period, commoners were banned from wearing silk entirely, pushing them towards cotton and hemp. The message was clear: appearance was not just a reflection of wealth, but a way to dampen self-expression and social mobility.
That same visual gatekeeping plays out today. The 'quiet luxury' trend - all under-the-radar cashmere and discreetly cut tailoring - signals old money’s insider status, while logo-splashed fashion fans are often read as less aspirational. It’s the modern echo of sumptuary laws: using dress codes, subtle or loud, to separate those who are wealthy from those striving to look it.
Breaking Beauty: Foot Binding
In Imperial China, the ultimate marker of refined femininity was the tiny 'lotus foot', ideally measuring just three inches long. The practice began during the Song Dynasty (10th century) and persisted for almost a thousand years. It involved breaking the arches and curling the toes under, then binding the feet tightly in cloth to prevent growth.
The process typically started between ages four and eight when bones were still soft. Girls endured years of rebinding, infections, and, in severe cases, the loss of toes from gangrene. Walking was painful for life, but this immobility was part of the allure: women with bound feet could not work in fields or markets. signalling their families’ wealth and status.This ideal excluded the vast majority of women - only those from families with enough resources to support a non-working daughter could participate.
As with corsets in Europe, the appeal was deeply tied to social hierarchy and male desire. Bound feet were considered erotic, and the distinctive swaying gait they caused was idealised in poetry and art. The practice was officially banned in the early 20th century, but its effects echo in modern culture. Today’s painful stilettos, body modification surgeries, and even certain fitness or wellness regimes still demand the body be reshaped or restricted to meet narrow ideals - often only safely accessible only to those with wealth and privilege, leaving others feeling the pressure to measure up, by any means possible.
Toxic Legacies - The Price of Skin Colour
For centuries in Europe, pale skin was a visual passport to higher status. It signalled a life free from outdoor labour and became deeply tied to ideas of refinement and class. But when European colonisation expanded across Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean from the 16th century onwards, this ideal travelled with them.
Whiteness was positioned as the beauty standard - not just for skin tone, but as a symbol of ‘civilisation’ itself.
Because of this in colonised societies, people of colour with lighter skin were often given a higher social status which meant better marriage prospects, greater social mobility, and preferential treatment under colonial systems.This enforced hierarchy laid the groundwork for the global skin-whitening industry, now worth billions.
Today, products containing bleaching agents like hydroquinone and mercury are still sold - sometimes illegally - across markets in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In many of these regions, marketing campaigns continue to frame lighter skin as more beautiful, successful, and desirable, echoing the same colonial messaging. But, the cost of achieving lighter skin can be physically damaging - skin thinning, kidney damage, and mercury poisoning are just some of the consequences - as well as contributing to mental and emotional harm through harassment, bullying, ostracisation and low self worth.
Anita Bhagwandas, journalist and author of UGLY; Why the world became beauty-obsessed and how to break free. Writer of The Powder Room and @itsmeanitab on social media.
