Historian Dr. Lacey Bonar Hull, who focuses on the Medieval period, recently posted a series delving into the “unhinged” beauty secrets of the Middle Ages. In particular, she explores how women achieved the extremely high foreheads you see in so many portraits from the period. Turns out, there’s more than one way to skin a cat…and your hairline.
“High foreheads were famously fashionable in the medieval period,” wrote Dr. Hull, “and women came up with creative ways to achieve them.”
Medieval hair removal
Women in the Italian city of Salerno, for instance, would mix a chemical called quicklime (aka calcium oxide) with boiling water. You’d know the tincture was ready to use when you’d dip a bird’s wing into it and the feathers fell off. She did not specify whether the bird was still attached to the wing during this process.
Once the hot mixture was, in fact, ready, it would be applied to the hairline to remove unwanted hair. This would need to be done quickly, as the concoction could remove skin as well.
In other regions, women created Medieval Nair by combining a highly toxic mineral called orpiment with henbane seeds (also toxic), then diluting it with lukewarm pig’s blood. They heated the mixture over a fire or in the sun, then slathered it onto the hairline or even the eyebrows.
One could also mix equal parts ant eggs, ivy, and orpiment and apply it only to freshly plucked skin. Sounds totally safe.
How Medieval women kept hair from growing back
Removing the hair was only step one. To keep the hair from growing back, these women would dip ant eggs into oil used for cooking hedgehogs, then spread the oil-soaked eggs onto their hairline.
So many questions here. What was the obsession with ant eggs? Where does one find ant eggs? Why pig’s blood, specifically? PEOPLE ATE HEDGEHOGS?
It could be argued that these women figured out that a buildup of sebum (oil) clogs hair follicles, slowing hair growth. But that is only one piece of this very baffling puzzle.
In a pinch, women also cooked snails and frogs in vinegar, then spread the fat on their hairlines to achieve similar success.
Justice for naturally high foreheads
While Hull’s, ahem, enlightening series left many grossed out, it also strangely gave folks a newfound appreciation for the high forehead nature gave them.
“How I have been born in the wrong era, my forehead would have won me a husband.”
“Oh so what you’re saying is my fivehead and I would clean up in court.”
“My 6 finger forehead needs a time machine to have its moment.”
“My receding hairline would be thriving back then 😂”
“My fivehead would make the hottest ticket in town!”
“I have a huge forehead. I was born in the wrong time.”
Will we ever learn our lesson?
Of course, if history is any guide, folks a few hundred years from now will likely look back on Botox, fillers, buccal fat removal, and the like with the same repulsion. Perhaps someday we’ll learn that beauty trends come and go, and to think twice before doing something potentially harmful to our bodies during our one precious life.
Or maybe tentacles will come into vogue. That could be pretty cool too, I guess.
