RedHanded - ShortHand: Deadly Beauty Practices

Episode Date: September 22, 2026

From Belladonna eye drops to literally eating arsenic, human vanity has taken us to some pretty dark places in our quest to look drop dead gorgeous…But would you risk your life for the perfect makeover?In this week’s ShortHand, we’re looking at the toxic history of beauty hacks – and trust us, you do not wanna try these at home.--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

They say that beauty is pain, and anyone who has ever battled with the miniature torture device that is an eyelash curler will be able to attest to that fact. Today we live in an image-obsessed world where aesthetic treatments are everywhere. Botox, filler, BBLs, laser hair removal, you name it, no matter what the perceived floor, beauty boffins can inject, sculpt, pluck and laser us into perfection. And this obsession is far from a modern idea. Since the dawn of time, we hear. humans have been taking drastic measures to look hot. Sometimes even risking our own lives in the process. From lead makeup to arsenic wafers to x-rays and botched plastic surgeries, the pursuit of beauty has always come at a cost. How much would you risk for the ideal glow-up?

This is the drop-dead gorgeous shorthand. Now, you might think ancient civilizations might have had too much on their plates for vanity, with all that empire building and whatnot. But as it turns out, they were just as concerned about looking fit as we are today. In ancient Egypt, Cleopatra wasn't the only one rocking that iconic eyeliner. Coal, a black powder made from a mineral form of lead sulfite, called Galena, was used by men, women, and children across all Egyptian social classes. And if your alarm bells started ringing at lead, trust us.

We'll get back to that. But in small amounts, it actually protected the eyes from harsh sunlight, repelled insects, and also helped to prevent eye infections. Who knew? I mean, maybe the Egyptians, but not me. They knew loads of stuff. They did, didn't they? Then, over an ancient Rome, the wealthy were said to swear by crocodile-dung face masks,

because nothing says fresh face like smearing reptile shit on your cheeks, apparently. Romans also reportedly used urine-based mouthwash, believing the ammonia would give them pearly white smiles. And if you're thinking these methods seem pretty tame, well, things are about to get a whole lot Nalier. In 10th century China, the truly toe-cirling practice of foot binding began. The story goes that it all kicked off when the southern Tang Emperor Li Yu asked his concubine Yao Nyang to bind her feet with white silk in the shape of a crescent moon

and dance on the points of a golden lotus sculpture that he had created. Yang's sexy routine went down a stall with upper-class women copying her. The lotus feet craze spread through all social classes over the centuries and eventually becoming a core beauty standard for Chinese women. The horrific practice involved breaking young girls' feet and binding them tightly to stop them growing too large, creating an unnaturally deep arch.

Special lotus shoes were created with freakishly tiny feet seen as a mark of feminine beauty and grace. Needless to say, this caused many women intense pain and lifelong disabilities. The practice finally died out in the early 20th century after anti-footbinding campaigns, but as recently as 2007, a handful of elderly Chinese women still held their scars. Back in medieval and Renaissance Europe, some very dodgy beauty hacks emerged. Women reportedly used literal cat shit as hair remover, while balms and tonics containing decidedly witchy ingredients like nukes, bats, frogs and snakes were also popular.

And things even got a bit vampiric, with one famous physician recommending skin conditions be treated with three litres of blood from healthy red-headed men. Blood-letting gingers aside, these were admittedly more icky than truly hazardous. Enter the Italians, for whom beauty was very much in the eye of the beholder. In the Renaissance era, for some reason, large pupils were considered to be very sexy for women. And God knows how, but at some point people discovered that if you dropped the juice of a certain plant into your eyes, it would make your pupils blow out. Now, this was thanks to the chemical atropine, which blocks the receptors in eye muscles that are meant to contract pupil size. And fun fact, optometrists today still use it in regulated doses to dilate. late pupils for eye tests. The plant was named Bella Donna, meaning beautiful woman after this practice.

But Bella Donna also has another more sinister nickname, deadly nightshade. And yeah, the clue is kind of there. Unfortunate side effects of Belladonna drops included blurred vision, trouble focusing, headaches, light sensitivity and glaucoma. And with prolonged use, it could even be fatal. Still, for many, the risk was worth it to achieve those bedroom eyes, and ladies were still using it across the Western world well into the 19th century. We can't really talk about beauty practices without addressing the thorny topic of beauty standards. Whilst today we have the Kardashian-inspired ideal of bronzed skin for much of history, the Western world was obsessed with looking as pale as humanly possible. Aside from the obvious racial implications, fair skin was seen as the ultimate sign of wealth because it showed that

are rich enough to not have to toil away in the fields all day. But since not everyone had the dubious honour of looking naturally ghostly, they got creative, with a cosmetic concoction known as Venetian seruse. Popular from the early modern period onwards, women and some wealthy men applied this white paste onto their skin to signal their hot-trot status. The secret ingredient is crime, but also lead, mainly lead, it's just lead. It's pure lead carbonate. And as we hinted to earlier,

we probably don't have to tell you that smearing a highly toxic heavy metal like lead all over your skin is going to cause some problems. Common symptoms of lead poisoning include skin ulcers, hair loss, tooth decay, neurological damage, infertility, and kidney failure. And the cruel irony was that the more Venetian seruse you used, the more fucked up it made your skin.

So people ended up slapping all. on even more to cover up the damage. The most famous poster girl for Phoenician Seuss has to be Queen Elizabeth I, whose flaming red hair and ghostly white face remains iconic. Although a strong wake-up game wasn't enough to get the Virgin Queen laid.

Some historians actually reckon that lead poisoning was to blame for Elizabeth's death, since most of her teeth and her hair had fallen out before she kicked the bucket. By the early 1800s, toxic white paces had been mostly phased out and replaced with safer alternatives like talcum powder, pearl white and French chalk. The consumption chic vibe had fallen out of style by then anyway, with the Victorian era

praising a more natural beauty look featuring clear skin, bright eyes and rosy cheeks. But as any woman knows, a so-called natural look actually requires quite a bit of work. So thankfully the Victorians were ready to meet the challenge head on. From cocaine to cure hay fever to opium lace concoctions for curing fussy tots, Victorian entrepreneurs were famous for peddling miracle cures for all kinds of ailments, and beauty was no exception. In magazine advice columns like Harper's Bazaar's brilliantly named ugly girl papers, the girl in need of a glow-up could find beauty hacks promising to turn her into a ten,

and anyone with a compact in a dream could turn her boudoir into a chemistry lab. Ladies were instructed to coat their faces with opium for a chic overnight sleep mask, briskly wash it off with ammonia, aka bleach in the morning, and for really stubborn skin, a chemical called pteraxicum, worked as a sort of 1800s chemical peel to create a mild but imperceptible blister that leaves a new skin soft as an infants. For those hoping for luscious lashes, rubbing an anointment made from nitric oxide of mercury and lard in

into the edge of the eyes were set to work a treat. So the same ingredients we'd associate with industrial cleaning and pest control today. Just right there, all over your eyes. They could be found bottled and gleaming on every stylish lady's dressing table. And the truly essential step in any self-respecting Victorian girl's skincare routine was arsenic baby just like everything else. While we might know it today as a fearsome poison in the 19th century, it was a common ingredient in loads of medicines.

And in the 1850s, media reports started raving about how mysterious arsenic eaters in the remote Austrian Alps had stunning skin as a result, which naturally triggered a wave of arsenic-tinged soaps and cosmetic products on the market, including a line of edible products under doctory brand names like Dr. P. Campbell's safe arsenic complexion waifers. These chalky little morsels

promised to transform the most sallow skin into radiant health remove pimples, clear the face of freckles and tan, and give the complexion an indescribable brilliancy, and lend to every young lady a charm of person, which makes her adorable. Forget acutane in the Victorian era, people were literally eating poison. But don't worry. It said on the box, guaranteed safe and harmless, so what could possibly go wrong?

Well, actually, loads. It's almost like they also knew it wasn't safe and harmless, because it kind of feels like the lady doth protest too much with that. Some say that arsenic can make your skin look pale by destroying your red blood cells, while others argue that it dilates blood vessels to create a rosy glow. And in small doses, it can actually be tolerated by your body. But if you take too much for too long, the consequences are brutal. Those prettily packaged arsenic wafers carried the risk of causing nerve damage,

cancer, heart disease and even death. But they didn't put that. on the box. In 1911, an 18-year-old woman called Hildegard Walton died in St. Louis after she scoffed several boxes of wafers at once, hoping to clear up a skin breakout. And while the use of these products dropped off after World War I, when stricter regulations were put in place, arsenic soaps were still on sale well into the 1930s. Next on the list of risky places to visit in the bad old days is the hairdressers. Up to the 1920s, many salons didn't have a supply of hot or cold water to wash their client's hair, which meant some places offered petroleum

washes as part of an ingenious dry shampoo option. And yep, that basically means exactly what it sounds like, dousing your hair with literal petrol. In 1897, a woman named Fanny Samuelson died in a freak accident at the Ritzie Monsieur Emilin-Co salon in London, with the inquest ruling that the friction from rubbing her petrol-soaked hair had set it alight. How does that work like dry shafts? Qualify as a freak accident? It's literally in Zoolander. It's like, oh, and they died in a freak gasoline fight incident.

Come on. I'm so confused about, yes, how it's a freak, but also how that works to clean your hair. I'm very confused. I mean, petrol, not the first thing I think of when I think of cleaning things, other than cleaning it off, seabirds that have been in an oil slick. I don't get it. It's very weird. But the cosmetics industry wasn't deterred from seeking high-tech solutions to the public's beauty woes. Starting in the 1920s, commercial salons began using x-rays as a depolation technique. Pioneered by a guy called Dr. Albert Giza at his Tricot Institute in New York,

it was basically heavily marketed across the US and the UK for the next two decades as a painless, accessible and foolproof way for women to permanently remove pesky body hair, which by this point was a total cultural no-no, unless of course you wanted to die alone. While the treatment went off the market in 1946, it was tragically too late for many. In the 50s, there was a spike in cancer cases

linked to women who'd visited X-ray beauty practitioners in the past, with further research from the 70s confirming that 35% of radiation-based cancers and women could be traced back to this treatment. And for the next big thing in the beauty world, we've got Science Queen Marie Curie to thank. After Curie and her husband Pierre discovered radium in 1898, it was hailed as a miracle element that could cure all manner of ills.

So, naturally, we started cramming radium into absolutely everything. It wasn't until a few years down the line that they realised this may have been a mistake. The 1920s saw the scale. handle of the radium girls, female factory workers who develop terrifying symptoms after being encouraged to lick paint brushes of radium when painting glow in the dark watch faces. That is another shorthand, I'm sure it's on the list. Yeah.

Have we done it? No, not yet. As we now know from catastrophes like Chernobyl, Radium is not something that you want to mess around with or certainly not put it in your mouth, since even slight exposure has been linked to various cancers. But throughout the 20s and the 30s, you could find it in your bathroom cabinet. Radium-infused products like toothpaste, face creams and hair perm kits were all the rage, marketed as a futuristic miracle cure to turn back time on wrinkles.

Thankfully, it didn't seem to cause a serious public health risk, mainly because it was mega expensive, so most of the products didn't actually contain that much radium at all. So in this case, being scammed by false advertising actually turned out for the rest. Now, earlier in this episode, we talked about Western beauty standards, always favouring fair skin. But in the 20th century, this changed in a big way. After the Industrial Revolution, being pale actually became a sign of poverty, because it meant that you were likely stuck inside doing grawling factory work.

And who do we have to blame for this shift in perspective? Legendary fashion designer and Nazi girl pal Coco Chanel. When she rocked up in Paris with a sun-kiss glow after a trip to the French review, She declared that the 1929 girl must be tanned, and a golden tan is the index of chic. Having a tan meant you lived a wealthy enough lifestyle to take holidays, and soon it became the ultimate status symbol. But obviously, not everyone could afford to jet off for a week in the sun and then back again. So once again, we got creative.

Through the 30s and 40s, girls were painting their legs with gravy granules and tea bags to create the illusion of hot dogs for Lex. The discovery of dihydroxyacetone in the 1960s led to bottled fake tan as we know it today. But it wasn't until the 1970s that the tanning industry really took off with the very regrettable invention of sunbeds. I am still shocked when I walk past a sunbed shop in this day and age and I'm like, surely not, surely not. But surely yes, they're still out there. I've seen them. But yes, going back to when they were first invented, German scientist Friedrich Wolff invented the first commercial tanning bed in 1975,

and it took the world by absolute storm. And by the 1980s and 90s, topping up your glow in a UV coffin had become an essential part of millions of daily beauty regimes. At first, the risks weren't really talked about. But by the millennium, scientists had established a strong link between sunbeds and skin cancer, and the outlook was bleak. In 2009, the UK government announced that rates of malignant melanoma had more than quadrupled in 30 years,

becoming the most common cancer in those aged 15 to 34. The use of tanning devices before the age of 30 was linked to a 75% increased chance of developing melanoma. As a result, tougher regulations were implemented like the Sunbed Regulation Act 2010, which banned their use for under 18. teens. And honestly, it's hard to believe it was allowed as recently as that. They're quite good for people with psoriasis.

Yeah, you can get like the red lights and things like that for psoriasis, even people using them for acne. But just like a straight UV sunbed for a tan, I mean, it's fucking wild. But they're there. For most of history, the elixir of beauty was bottled in lotions, potions and creams. But what about scalpsing a more permanent kind of perfection? Plastic surgery has actually been around for a lot longer than you might think. As early as 600 BC, the physician Sushruta was performing rhinoplasties in India, and similar surgical techniques were used around the world and refined over the years.

These procedures were for people who'd been disfigured by accidents, combat injuries or disease with the intention of returning to normal rather than enhancing their looks. But all that began to change in the 19th century when advancements in anaesthesia technology made surgery less risky and less inconvenient. In 1881, New York surgeon Edward Eli performed the first correction of sticky-out ears

and in 1890, John Orlando Roe performed the first modern caspetic nose job on what was described as a pug-nosed deformity. These procedures were still quite rare and reserved for the ultra-rich. Not to mention getting work done was nowhere near as accepted as it is today. Doctors who performed this kind of surgery

were labelled as quacks while patients faced ridicule and were treated as psychiatric cases for being victims of vanity. In a classic case of Victorian hypocrisy, you could chow down on arsenic wafers for perfect skin, but if you wanted a straighter nose, you were absolutely nut. Which brings us to the OG botched influencer,

Gladys Deacon. A socialite born in 1888, she later became known as Blenheim Palace's notorious Duchess of Marlborough, one of Sir Winston Churchill's eccentric indoor relatives. In her gilded age youth, Gladys was described as the world's most beautiful woman, and was especially praised for her beautiful Gratian profile. But, as we know, beauty doesn't last forever. So Gladys decided to set it in stone, literally. In 1903, age 22, she had paraffin wax injected into her nose to enhance its shape.

Surgeons at this time were using materials like paraffin, crude rubber and ivory as implant materials to sculpt facial features. But sadly, it didn't work out for poor Gladys. The wax set hard, concrete-like lumps had migrated into her jaw, disfiguring her features and causing necrosis of the flesh. While Gladys survived, she went from the most beautiful gullis. in the world to a whispered cautionary tale. I also think that she couldn't really go outside because it melted under her skin if she was in the sun.

Fuck, I'm out. But I might be wrong. But you can't stop me, call the police. Still, plastic surgery wasn't going anywhere. And after World War I, pioneering surgeons changed the game. With countless soldiers returning from the battlefield with disfiguring injuries, doctors like Sir Harold Gillis, recognized as the father of modern plastic surgery,

developed cutting-edge techniques to reconstruct maimed features. And while there was still stigma around going under the knife for aesthetic reasons, the rise of Hollywood's beauty symbols in the 20s and the 30s made it a lot more common. But if you wanted to replicate your favourite starlets look, it wouldn't exactly be a case of just nipping in for a quick nip and tuck, because early to mid-20th century cosmetic surgery procedures were brutal. There was no such thing as keyhole surgery, which meant the process would be invasive. And before the advent of antibiotics, the risk of infection and scarring was high.

Early fat removal procedures had especially high complication rates. In 1921, French surgeon Charles de Jureer removed fat from a dancer's calves and knees using a uterine curate. That's the thing they used to scrape stuff out of your womb and ended up having her leg amputated. Updates to anaesthesias and antiseptics in the 40s created a boom in procedures with the number of Americans undergoing cosmetic surgery leaping from just 15,000 in 1949 to nearly half a million in 1969. In 1962, surgeon Thomas Cronin developed the world's first silicon breast implants, and for years, horror stories of people's boobs literally exploding were frighteningly common. If the implants ruptured, it could lead to septic shock and death,

although luckily these techniques have been refined over the years. Today, cosmetic procedures have become incredibly normalized, partly thanks to the social media era's obsession with achieving a doll-like aesthetic. The International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons estimates that almost 38 million surgical and non-surgical procedures were performed globally in 2024. It's also more accessible than ever these days,

with beauty salons increasingly pivoting to offer aesthetic treatments, so you don't even have to set foot in a hospital. These tweakments are marketed as a normal part of a self-care routine, rather than some sort of invasive, risky ordeal. And while they're obviously never totally risk-free, the general consensus is that cosmetic procedures are safe and have a fairly low rate of complications. If they're done properly, of course, we've all watched, botched.

And I think this perception is probably exactly the problem, because the explosion of this industry has grown faster than regulations can keep up with, leading to the rise of unlicensed backstreet practitioners. Wannabe estheticians can easily order the gear that they need online, but don't have to have the proper medical training to follow hygiene and safety protocols. In a world where you can go around some random woman's house and get your lips injected, the risks are massive. A survey by ITV daytime show this morning found that over 50% of people who got unregulated,

aesthetic treatments had to seek medical assistance afterwards, with 15% ending up in hospital or A&E with serious complications. Unlicensed Botox has led to botulism outbreaks and multiple hospitalizations. And so-called pumping parties, illegal gatherings where unlicensed practitioners inject liquid substances like industrial-grade silicon, mineral oil or literal cement into people's bodies to enhance their curves, have been the subject of major police crackdowns. An increasingly popular surgery is the Brazilian buttlift, or BBL, for which we have the

Kardashian sisters and they're impossibly round rears to thank. This procedure has the highest death rate of any aesthetic treatment out there, with an estimated one death for every 2 to 4,000 surgeries, which is a lot. The most common cause of death is a pulmonary fat embolism, where fat is injected too deeply into the glute muscles, allowing fat particles to travel through veins into the heart or lungs. When that's done by a trained medical professional, the death risk lowers dramatically. But for many modern-day Gladys Deacons,

it comes at too heftier price tag. Many travel abroad to countries where regulations are more lax and are performed by unlicensed surgeons who aren't properly trained on the risks for a cheaper cost. So those desperate for a glow-up on a budget might potentially pay with their lives. and while we might laugh at the Elizabethan girlies we're painting their faces with lead

I don't really feel like that much has changed we're finding something else every time oh yeah oh my god yeah I mean honestly I feel like not even feel like it's true people just being like oh there's this brand new treatment no one's like oh let me just wait around

and see how that like plays out for a few years like oh give it to me I want the latest treatment to make me hot and like fix this problem so no I think it's all very you know funny when we laugh at people in the past but like we're exactly the same like there's so much like so many things beauty treatments that are used and things like that like have not been proven to be safe and have been proven to be actively dangerous like sunbeds but like so so like is it that weird that they were rubbing lead on their faces and giving themselves cancer they didn't actually know we do

we still do it so yeah bad times I mean yeah I think the tanning one is is the most interesting because I did actually watch a documentary or some sort of like TV show about like people who buy like injectable tanner off the internet. Oh my God, that is horrific. If you haven't seen the pictures of that, look it up and then close your laptop and just go have a sleep and just know that you're beautiful. And that's it, guys.

That is the shorthand on deadly beauty treatments. We'll see you next week for something else. Goodbye. Goodbye.