VICTORIAN BEAUTY IDEALS

Queen Victoria's rule (1837-1901) was a time of serious social and economic change, bot in Britain and abroad. The industrial revolution had changed the way people lived, offering a tantalizing glimpse of social mobility through the development of a middle class.

WOMEN

• Bathing = there is a myth plaguing history that people only bathed once every few years, if at all, until the twentieth century. Doctors of the nineteenth century recommended frequent bathing, and your social class and occupation dictated how often you bathed. Those who could afford a bathtub would have bathed a few times every month, whilst the poor were lucky to bath once a year. Extreme temperatures for bathing were warned against by doctors due to a negative impact on the health and appearance of one's skin. Tepid water infused with bran was best, followed by a heavy dose of exfoliation with a washcloth to create bright and smooth skin. Turkish baths were very popular among the upper class and body steams were also encouraged to purge the skin of organic poisons and impurities. 
• Complexion = In the Victorian era, the only good complexion was a pale one. The "superiority" of upper-class white women was an accepted fact of society, directly promoted in beauty book with high advice for achieving the lightest, most ladylike skin possible. The high class you were perceived to be, the better your prospects for a good marriage. To achieve the fairest skin possible, women tried everything. Lead-based paints were used but not all women covered their faces with poisonous creams. The rich ones ate their poisons - due to the high price ingesting arsenic, chalk slate, or tea grounds was for only the fanciest of women. Eating poisons was heavily warned against by Victorian beauty writers due to the resulting 'sickly' appearance, youthful good health was the beauty standard of the day. Instead of using chemicals or poisons to promote healthy skin, women were advertised to sit in well ventilated rooms, get seven to eight hours of sleep each night, take some sun and eat healthy diets. The Victorians were also fascinated with zits, blackheads were sometimes known as 'fleshworms' because people thought worms were crawling out of their faces when they were extracted. A nightly steam, alternating with pure steam and sulphur, for two to three months was recommended as a cure to rid the face of blackheads and acne. They were advised to avoid all makeup.
• Makeup = Face paints and other cosmetics were frequently used by performers and prostitutes so therefore high society viewed these products as deplorable. No defined lady would be caught dead with the devil's trickery on her face. This was the line that the beauty guides promoted in theory. In practice, most upper class women wore a little makeup. Cold cream was recommended as a priming agent, applied prior to dusting the faintest veil of rouge across the cheeks finished with a transparent layer of powder to avoid a greasy complexion. Victorian women weren't worried about makeup in general, they were worried about wearing the wrong kind of makeup, the kind that would mark them at a lower class. This is something we still see in the media today. However, only the young were encouraged to enhance their beauty with cosmetics.

http://www.xovain.com/makeup/victorian-era-beauty