Do we really have to suffer to be beautiful?

James Gillray (1756 - 1815) knew all about the boudoir and the suffering therein.

One aging actress succumbed to old age less than gracefully. Well past her prime but still on stage comes the following report, "By the 1970's, the stage had been strategically darkened to camouflage her age, and she resorted to a number of painful tricks to maintain her glamorous image. These included braiding her hair tightly before donning a wig, and wearing a tight, all-over girdle under her elaborate costumes and gowns." A similar face-tightening technique is scalp taping. This requires powerful surgical plaster to be stuck just above the forehead and pulled strongly backwards. It is in effect, a non-surgical facelift. The plaster adheres to the scalp. Such ‘taping’ can pull the sides of the face taut as well but is extremely uncomfortable.

Julia Roberts in the film 'Mirror, Mirror' (2012) undergoes baroque beauty therapy that includes having her face covered in parrot droppings and using a bee sting to plump up the lips.

Two versions of the all-enveloping electric heater bag.

Curlers are one thing, balancing your hairpiece quite another. Meanwhile, some girls like the tin foil and others hate it.

 .. but the 'Acme Autoperm' is something else. The elderly lady on the left was the first customer.

You just can't have enough curlers! Photo from the SS United States liner. A lady has her hair prepared for dinner.

 The terrifying Max Factor invention was not a torture device, but an analogue face contour measurer. Perhaps it could measure the before and after effects of the patented 'Curves of Youth'.

On the right, it looks like a simple perm, but in this case, it really is a torture device used by Vincent Price in the film 'The Theatre of Blood' (1973) to electrocute a lady that criticised him. Hopefully not in real life since Vincent Price and the lady, Coral Browne married after the film's completion.

Face masks worthy of the fetish world were used and actually worn to smooth the skin and remove wrinkles. On left, the air pressure was reduced and on the right, the lady could breathe through a tube inserted into her mouth.

Despite being tastefully finished in satin, the mask above is still faintly terrifying, especially when connected to the electricity machine.

There are dials for the face, neck, chin and afterwards, the rather sinister nurses spray you with, I wonder what - some immobilising chemical to hold your remodelled face in shape. But don't spray the lady on the right just yet.

These masks were, amazingly, products of the 1990s. "Slip into your satin pyjamas" exhorts the advert. What is the point of those lovely satin pyjamas if the mask will scare any suitor off.

Who is this hiding behind a frankly disturbing face-mask with the oversize curlers?

 This is the lady that confessed to wearing four layers of Spanx at the 2012 Grammy Awards. Yes: None other than the singer Adele who truly suffers for her beauty. Mind you, the full face, rubber, anti-tanning mask is equally unsettling.

Again another 1990s marvel - a Bullworker for your lips. Amazingly, the filmed advert shows the poor woman performing 60 compressions WHILST GIVING A COMMENTARY.

"Thithh wi' etherthithe 'u' theeks". She keeps up the mumbling for two minutes in this grotesque almost ritual humiliation.

Witness the Japanese misses attempting to plump up their lips. This is seriously scary and once the lips are done, you can straighten that nose as well and then cover your face in Spanx.

There was no end to the old-fashioned inventors' ingenuity (or should I say, female gullability): freckle removers and dimple inserters being just the tip of the iceberg and not all these devices come from years ago. The lass on the right is keeping her wrinkles at bay in 2018.

Would you smear a good meal or African algae all over your fizzog, I certainly wouldn't.

The lady above is scared witless by the sight of Jim Carrey playing "the Mask", in fact about as scared as 'The Mask' (1994) is of confronting his landlady in curlers and a green facepack. Oh dear, some women just don't like to be seen like this including the Australian soap opera girl with the cricket bat. Meanwhile, Anna Karen in 'On the Buses' (1971) asks her husband "Shall I take my curlers out?" in the sadly mistaken belief that he is making romantic overtures and finally Candice Bergen in 'Book Club' (2018).

Melissa McCarthy has her teeth whitened in 'The Boss' (2020)

Helena Rubenstein created her fair share of alarming beauty treatments:

The rubber bloomer suit (left) was designed in 1902 for the keen lady cyclist. The phenomenal perspiration that the all-enveloping garment would induce was regarded as healthy in much the same way that rubber underwear (reducing corsetry) was advertised (and still is today). In the middle is the derma-lens where an expert could scrutinise your defective skin and suggest costly remedies such as the hormone heat treatment (right). After that, why not visit your local corsetiere who will gladly reveal all your body's defects as well.

Regard the lacing marks on the model above (middle). This was taken in 2009 after the photoshoot for the first calendar. The girdle has left a pronounced welt on the wearer as it has ridden down the body and it wasn't just foundation garments that left you battered and bruised, look at the structural engineering involved in a strapless evening gown.

This remarkable series of five postcards shows the ecstasy that can be achieved from lacing up your corsets (she will never, ever lace them closed) and donning a chin strap. Soon she will be slim and that double chin consigned to history; no wonder she looks so happy.

Less happy are the maidens with excess flesh as a consequence of drastic and rapid weight loss. For sure the flesh can be controlled and reformed but it is far from painless.

However, you have to congratulate the Canadian lady in the middle who lost so much weight and manages to control it with a selection of powerful elastic garments. Indeed, industrial strength elastic works wonders (as it has done for decades).

All that effort and the bra still doesn't fit!

But it was all worth it, the make-up, the fingernail painting, the dangerously pinned and balanced hairpieces, the tight, tighter girdle, the bosoms hoisted high, higher, the fluff, the all-enveloping satin and the teeth braced to piano key perfection (in the fullness of time for the girl on the left).

The Bouffant Hairstyle (not to mention the associated hairpieces)

You begin to see it above. The girl second from the right is a classic bouffant and very probably, only 75% is her real hair. That also applies to the girl on the right who has gone to town (or perhaps her mother had a hand) on her hairpieces.

Miss 1960s Americana was very good at this.

The Sister’s Tale:  I always found it odd that in our household, my sister was totally unconcerned about her ‘innocent’ younger brother seeing her in all stages of undress whereas my mother was extremely coy about appearing anything other than fully clothed. From these adolescent views of my sister and the presumption that my mother and granny went through similar procedures, I was amazed at the complexity, not just of dressing a female, but the pain and time involved and the resulting ever so fragile, albeit beautiful creature that emerged.

The process would start with a lengthy session in the bathroom from which sister would emerge swaddled in towels with a huge towel turban adorning her head. Her door would close at this point (there were some things I was not allowed to see) but half an hour later she would emerge, Gorgon-like, with a head full of curlers and some ghastly-hued gunge solidifying over her face. Her young body would be squeezed into layers of industrial strength elastic and satin, her rather empty bra and girdle. Why she needed underpants that weighed about two pounds, with bones, a zipper and legs that virtually went to her knees was beyond me, but apparently a woman’s internal organs would end up on the floor if not adequately supported. Mother would now appear, fully clothed of course and the ritual would continue in the bathroom. Sister’s teeth had never been her strong point and after years of bracing mother took on the delicate task of painting on some whitening fluid. Back into her bedroom, mute at his point as the whitening solidified, mother would help her with her stockings, two pairs I might add, a support pair fastened to garters under the girdle legs and a sheer seamed pair that were attached to external garters. Then the falsies that would fill out the empty spaces in her bra were inserted and shoulder pads clipped onto her bra straps. The petticoating could go two ways: if a flared skirt was to be worn,  a huge confection  of nylon  and  taffeta  would be lowered over her head and settled onto her waist. This would then be  secured  with  a  laced waspie.  I shuddered at the thought of this corset (for that is what it was) compressing the zipper and bones of her girdle further into her soft, young flesh.

She now would don something like a transparent waterproof coat to allow the face mask to be removed and thus began the transformation of the Gorgon into a doll. Powder, paint, false eyelashes, eye-liner, rouge and lipstick adorned the face whilst tedious  manipulation  of  the curlers,  heaters,  coolers  and  the  attachment  of  the mandatory beehive hairpiece (or whatever might be in vogue) with a dozen kirby grips took care of her tonsorial magnificence. The masterpiece was immortalised for eternity (well most of the day anyway) with several layers of hairspray. If a hat was to be worn, then another dozen pins could be called into play. Of course, sister’s fingernails had to be applied, she chewed her real ones too often for them to grow.

Mother and sister would now confer as to the selection of blouse and skirt or possibly dress. Why women’s clothes fasten up the back, I had no idea and why unstable bows had to be tied at the neck again was a mystery. Rings for the fingers and ears, a necklace perhaps, shoes with impossibly high heels and matching handbag all had to be coordinated and selected from the vast display in her cupboard.

Finally complete, sister looked stunning but what about the time-consuming effort and not a little pain involved, not to mention the perils of being thus encumbered. Starting  from  the  top:  Balance  and  avoidance  of  sudden  breezes  to  keep  that hair-piece / hat in place. Don’t perspire whatever you do and avoid any rain on your make-up. Pray that your eyelashes stay in place and watch what you eat. Never drink red wine for it will stain your temporarily whitened teeth. Head up, keep that pussy bow intact and careful with those nails. No violent manoeuvres lest the falsies / shoulder pads decide to migrate. Eating probably won’t be too much of an ordeal since your stomach capacity has been minimised by the corset (honestly it’s not a waspie). Flounced petticoat skirt or pencil skirt; both have their perils. A simple breeze or the act of sitting  is  likely to  reveal  the  virtuous  legs of  your girdle  beneath  a dozen rustling layers of nylon and taffeta and careful to avoid electrocution from the static electricity. If hobbled by a pencil skirt, sitting is nigh on impossible, so is conventional perambulation.  Mind you, on those heels the danger of falling off is ever present as is the ridiculous mincing gait engendered by the confined thigh movement and buttocks compressed to near nuclear density. Did I mention the stockings? How could anybody invent a material that would ladder under the slightest touch sometimes even by thought alone assuming, of course, that one of the beastly garters didn’t let go.

My beautiful precious butterfly of a sister, how fragile you are.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

If ever there was a film dedicated to this subject, it just has to be 'Crazy Ex-Girlfriend' (series started 2015) that runs a sequence of just how you have to suffer to be beautiful. The girl getting into her spanx is hilarious.

Sister in the 1960s