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Ancient Roman men plucked their armpit hair ​and other fun historical grooming facts

Wait until you see what they brushed their teeth with.

Photo credit: Canva

Did Julius Caesar have his armpits plucked? Probably.

Modern life may have us shaving, waxing, microblading, laser treating, Botoxing, and altering our natural appearance in all manner of ways in the name of beauty, but the idea of grooming to specific societal standards is nothing new. In cultures all around the world and throughout history, humans have found countless creative ways to make ourselves (ostensibly) look better.

Of course, what looks better is subjective and always has been. Take, for example, the ancient Romans. If you wanted to be seen as a studly man 2,000 years ago in the Roman Empire, you'd remove as much of your body hair as possible. That meant tweezing—or being tweezed by someone else, most likely an enslaved person.

armpit hair, grooming, hair removal, hairless, beauty standard Armpit hair wasn't cook in ancient Rome. Giphy

The Romans, in general, weren't big on body hair for men or women.

"You had to have the look,” Cameron Moffett, English Heritage’s curator at the Wroxeter Roman City museum in Shropshire, U.K., told The Times. “And the look was hairlessness, particularly the underarms.” A collection of 50 tweezers on display at the museum, recovered from the archeological site that was once the Roman city of Viriconium, speaks to Roman tweezing habits, but that's not the only evidence we have.

Stoic philosopher Seneca once wrote in a letter lamenting how the noise from the Roman baths was disrupting his work: "Besides those who just have loud voices, imagine the skinny armpit-hair plucker whose cries are shrill to draw people's attention and never stop except when he's doing his job and making someone else shriek for him."

When we picture the ancient Romans, "skinny armpit-hair plucker" may not be the image that comes to mind, yet here we are.


teeth brushing, toothbrush, oral hygiene, toothpaste, dental hygiene They brushed with what now? Giphy

While we fret over fluoride, the Romans brushed their teeth with pee and mouse brains.

Toothpastes of the past were made with all kinds of things—herbs, spices, salts, crushed bone, and more. For the ancient Romans, that "more" included mouse brains and human urine, according to Decisions in Dentistry. Mouse brains were believed to enhance the effectiveness of toothpaste, and urine, imported in large quantities from Portugal, was utilized for its ammonia content and whitening properties. A standard Roman toothpaste would be a mixture of herbs, mouse brains, urine, and a binder such as honey. Oddly enough, it appeared to be somewhat effective, with archeological findings showing a relatively low number of cavities and tooth decay.

@charissekenion

Sailorr has everyone talking about her sound - and her teeth. Here’s my super short history lesson on the practice of ohaguro #ohaguro #geisha #japanese #japantok #aapi #history #japan #historytok #sailorr #japanesebeauty

Meanwhile, in ancient Japan, women tried to blacken their teeth

Teeth whitening is all the rage in modern times, but in the distant past in parts of Asia, making your teeth black was considered beautiful. The practice known as ohaguro was a traditional Japanese practice that, ironically, was intended to prevent tooth decay.

According to a letter in the British Dental Journal, women in ancient Japan would paint a solution of ferric acetate (from iron filings), vinegar, and tannin from tea or vegetables. It was called kanemizuonto and made the teeth appear black. The practice has made a comeback among some rural areas of Southeast Asia, and the Vietnamese-American singer Sailorr has made waves with her blackened teeth as well.

ear picker, history, artifact, grooming, beauty An ornate ear picker.The Swedish History Museum, Stockholm/Wikimedia Commons

Ear pickers were much prettier than Q-tips. In fact, they were an accessory.

The old saying, "Don't put anything in your ear except your elbow," may not be as old as it seems, as people have been inserting objects into their ears to remove wax for a long time.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, it was common to see beautiful, ornate "ear pickers"—small metal tools with a small scoop at the end for cleaning ears as well as teeth and fingernails. According to Jamestown Rediscovery, it was fashionable to wear gold and silver toiletry tools, such as ear pickers or toothpicks, as accessories. It's hard to imagine wearing Q-tips and toothpicks around. Also, ew. But if you look up "ear pickers," you'll find ornate examples from various parts of the world.

At the very least, it's nice to know that modern humans are not the first ones to go to great—and sometimes interesting—lengths to meet an arbitrary social standard of beauty. (And three cheers for modern toothpaste. Seriously.)

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Pop Culture

Justine Bateman bristled when her name autocompleted with 'looks old.' Then she embraced it.

"I find it wrong that women absorb the idea that faces need to be fixed. That it's being treated as a matter of fact."

Photos by Greg2600/Wikimedia Commons

Justine Bateman is rejecting the beauty standards set by Hollywood.

Aging is a weird thing. We all get older—we truly have no choice in the matter. It's literally how time and living things work. But boy, do we make the process all kinds of complicated. The anti-aging market has created a 58.5 billion-dollar industry, with human beings spending their whole lives getting older spending buttloads of money to pretend like it's not happening.

I'm one of those human beings, by the way, so no judgment here. When I find a product that makes me look as young as I feel, I get pretty giddy. But there's no doubt that our views on aging—and by extension, our perspectives on our own aging bodies—are influenced by popular culture. As we see celebrities in the spotlight who seem to be ageless, we enviously tag them with the hashtag #aginggoals.

meryl streep, aging, getting older, anti-aging, bauty Women are conditioned to fear aging. Giphy

The goal is to "age well," which ultimately means looking like we're not aging at all. And so we break out the creams and the serums and the microdermabrasion and the injections—even the scalpel, in some cases—to keep the wrinkles, crinkles, bags, and sags at bay.

There's a big, blurry line between having a healthy skincare routine and demonizing normal signs of aging, and we each decide where our own line gets drawn.

This is where Justine Bateman comes in.

The actress/filmmaker was born in 1966 and is turning the idea of #aginggoals on its head by simply, boldly embracing her face as it is. No apologies. No avoidance. Just a simple message of "Yeah, this is my face."

Bateman hasn't always had such radical self-acceptance. After Googling herself during the writing of her first book, Fame: The Hijacking of Reality, she saw that the autocomplete after her name read "looks old." So she looked at the photos people were sharing of her 40-something-year-old face as "evidence."

"I thought my face looked fine," she told PEOPLE. "Because of some of the fears I had, unrelated to my face, I decided to make them right and me wrong....I became really ashamed of my face, ridiculously so."

aging, anti-aging, botox, plastic surgery, beauty standards Beauty standards have women going to all lengths to remain young-looking.Photo credit: Canva

"I looked the same the day before as I did the day after," she said, "and yet I felt totally different about my face...The only difference was that I had read the criticism."

That experience led her to explore how society views women and aging, a topic she explores in her book Face: One Square Foot of Skin. It also led to her truly embrace her face in all its aging glory.

Instead of fighting the aging process like many of us do, she decided to fight the fear attached to it.

"I hated the idea that half the population was perhaps spending the entire second half of their lives ashamed and apologetic that their faces had aged naturally," Bateman writes in her book.

She also shared with PEOPLE how she feels about society painting the physical signs of aging as inherently negative.

"I find it wrong that women absorb the idea that faces need to be fixed," she said. "That it's being treated as a matter of fact. I feel that we've skipped over the phase where we talk about whether or not we should criticize women's faces as they get older."

"I think getting all this plastic surgery is just people pleasing," she continued. "You don't want people to criticize you anymore so you appease them. The more you do that, the further away you get away from your true self. It doesn't work for me. If somebody said to me now we could do some surgery, wouldn't I be signaling that I'm super insecure? To me, it would."

In her book, Bateman describes what people are really seeing when they look at her face in its aging glory:

"You're looking at f***ing determination and truth and creativity. You're looking at loss and sorrow and the effort for a deeper perspective. You're looking at satisfaction and happiness. You're looking at a manifestation of a connection so deep and rooted that it's more real than I am. You're looking at my face."

YES. What a refreshing perspective to add to the conversation surrounding beauty and aging. It's odd that seeing a woman simply accept the lines in her face is inspiring, but it really is.

Perhaps we should recalibrate #aginggoals to be more about how we feel than how we look. After all, if anyone is "aging well," it's the woman who feels—as Bateman told Vanity Fair—"empowered to walk out in the world with an attitude that says, 'Fuck you, I look great.'"

Right on, Justine Bateman. Thanks for helping us embrace our faces just as they are.

This article originally appeared four years ago.

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Humor

Witty millennials share the secret reasons they look younger than other generations

It was all those Flintstones vitamins, for sure.

Canva Photos & Mike Mozart/Flickr & Carla Lewis/Flickr & Shelley/Flickr

Why do millennials look younger than other generations?

It's a well-noted phenomenon that people used to look, well, older. Millennials, in particular, seem to be hyper-aware of this strange occurrence. When we think of the movie and TV stars of our youth, for example, we're often stunned to learn how old they were. Al Bundy from Married With Children is a spry 39 years old when the series starts. George Costanza is a mere 29 when Seinfeld begins. The entire cast of Cheers was in their 30s for most of the run, with Kelsey Grammer being just 28 in his first appearance on the show. We could have all sworn up and down these people were well into their 40s!

But no. Our shocking inability to accurately determine the ages of people outside our generation definitely begs a self-serving and tongue-firmly-in-cheek question: Are millennials just aging absolutely phenomenally?

Kristen, a "proud millennial" on TikTok, thinks so. In a recent video, she posed the question to her followers: Why do millennials look so young?

"I have a question for millennials. What do you guys think we did right growing up that we look young?"

Anticipating the reaction to her question, she immediately scoffs. "Don't even look at me like that! Don't even lie to yourself! Look at us!" She asserts that millennials look younger than Gen Z, or at least the same age, despite being quite a bit older. "Do you guys think it was the tanning beds? Or the hot pockets we used to eat?"

Watch the hilariously tongue-in-cheek video here:

@krisalmasan

Millennials 🫶🏻 #millennialsoftiktok #fyp

Kristen may have had the guts to say it out loud, but she's definitely not the only one thinking it. Her video racked up over a million views and people were chomping at the bit to chime in with their own theories on why millennials are aging like fine wine.

Some say it was the things we ate, or the less-than-ideal products we used on our body at the time:

"We took Flintstones vitamins"

millennials, gen x, gen z, aging, health, beauty, generations, flintstonesYabba dabba doo!Giphy

"It was the apricot scrub"

"It's all the preservatives we ate in our food. We're pick[l]ed,"

"Slathered ourselves in Bath and Body Works Cucumber Melon daily"

"Oxy pads"

"It's all the preservatives in the lunchables we ate every day"

Some say it's because we grew and aged au naturale:

"We didn't start Botox at 19"

"We didn't have 12 step skincare routines when we were 10"

"We look younger than Gen Z because we didn't inject tons of filler in our faces when we were 22"

millennials, gen x, gen z, aging, health, beauty, generations, skincareGen Alpha is obsessed with SephoraGiphy

Maybe it was something less tangible and more spiritual:

"We just tell ourselves we are still babies and our cells believe us"

"Laughter. Generations before us were too serious. Gen z is too afraid of being cringe"

"It was because we reposted those long threads on MySpace and god blessed us for it ✨"

"It was forwarding the chain mail"

"Gen z wanted to grow up so fast and we wanted to stay young."

Or maybe we're just less stressed and anxious than the generation that's growing up now (which says a lot, because we are pretty darned stressed and anxious)

millennials, gen x, gen z, aging, health, beauty, generationsMillennials to every other generation: "Breathe, calm down"Giphy

"We didn’t have social media in middle school. I swear it’s that"

"Unlike Gen Z we weren’t up in everyone else’s business and stressing over stuff that doesn’t affect us at all. We weren’t offended by everything"

Whatever it is, there's definitely something to this phenomenon. It's been noted even by experts (not just hilarious TikTok commenters). One possible explanation is that millennials came of age right when we, as a culture, realized the importance of sunscreen and proper hydration. The theory that using makeup and skincare from too young of an age might end up being bad for your skin in the long run may actually hold some water, as well.

Simply put, millennials had the luxury of learning from the mistakes made by Gen X and Boomers. It's definitely possible that, at scale, cultural differences in how we were raised and how we approached health and wellness as we grew up have led to major differences between generations.

Personally, though, I think Lunchables and high-energy sodas like Surge and Jolt had medicinal properties that provided us with an extra burst of youth. But we'll probably never know for sure.

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Airbnb host wakes up guest in the dead of night so she wouldn't miss the northern lights

"I thought it was a prank."

via MissPencyl/TikTok

Pency Lucero watches the Northern Lights.

Seeing the northern lights is a common bucket list adventure for many people. After all, it ticks a lot of boxes—being a dazzling light show, a rich historical experience, and a scientific phenomenon all rolled into one. Plus there’s the uncertainty of it all, never quite knowing if you’ll witness a vivid streak of otherworldly colors dance across the sky…or simply see an oddly colored cloud. It’s nature’s slot machine, if you will.

Traveler and content creator Pency Lucero was willing to take that gamble. After thorough research, she stumbled upon an Airbnb in Rörbäck, Sweden, with an actual picture of the northern lights shining above the cabin in the listing. With that kind of photo evidence, she felt good about her odds.

airbnb, sweden, sweden northern lights, night sky sweden, green lightsThe Northern Lights in Sweden.via Airbnb

However, as soon as she landed, snow began falling so hard that the entire sky was “barely visible,” she told Upworthy. Martin, the Airbnb host, was nonetheless determined to do everything he could to ensure his guests got to see the spectacle, even offering to wake Lucero up in the middle of the night if he saw anything.

Then one night, the knock came.

In a video Lucero posted to TikTok, which now has over 12 million views, we hear Martin ushering her out to take a peek. Then we see Lucero’s face light up just before seeing the sky do the same.

“I thought it was a prank,” the onscreen text reads in the clip. “And then I see it….”

Watch:

@misspencyl

I’m on the verge of crying every time I watch this video I still cannot believe it. 📍 Rörbäck, Sweden


“I was mostly in awe of what this Earth is capable of,” Lucero recalled. “I never expected it to be THAT beautiful for the naked eye.” This is a hopeful sentiment against the widely accepted notion that the northern lights are often better looking in photos than they are in real life.

As Lucero asserted in a follow-up video, “Our video doesn’t do it justice at all…I would argue it’s even better for the naked eye.”

@misspencyl

Replying to @PatriotFamilyHomes I would argue its even better for the naked eye. Our video doesn’t do it justice at all. To be fair our Airbnb host said the one we saw doesn’t happen very often so I guess we were just very very lucky 🥹

Others were quick to back Lucero with anecdotes of their own experience. “It’s definitely possible to see it like in the pics. I saw it this winter in Norway, there was bright green, purple and so much movement.”

“They’re so much better in person, the way they dance and move around is insane and beautiful.”

iuceland night sky, iceland, nortern light iceland, aurora, night light, iceland beachThe Northern Lights in Iceland.via Nicolas J. Leclercq/Unsplash

Of course, if you ask Martin, who everyone agreed was the best host ever, seeing guest reactions of pure wonder and joy is even “better than the lights themselves.” But still, he can’t deny that there’s a breathtaking magic to it all. He shared with Upworthy that “Sometimes it feels like it will pull you up in the sky like you are in the middle of it. I wish everyone would have the chance to witness it.”

norway, northern lights, nature, beautiful night sky, lights in sky, snow, Amazing light display from Mother Nature.via Lightscape/Unsplash

When it comes to tips for actually seeing the northern lights, Martin admits it still mostly comes down to being in the right place at the right time. Luckily, his Airbnb listing can help with that.

What causes the northern lights?

The Northern Lights, scientifically known as Aurora Borealis, occur when charged particles from the sun collide with the atmosphere near the poles. The charged particles interact with gases such as nitrogen and oxygen to produce credible, colorful light displays that float magnificently above the night sky. The Northern Lights are most visible in high-latitude regions such as Sweden, Finland, Norway, Iceland, Alaska, and Canada.

Nature has a great way of reminding us that beyond the distractions and distresses of modern life, there is sublime beauty waiting for the chance to capture our hearts.

This article originally appeared two years ago.

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