It seems like people always want something they can’t have. Women with curly hair go for costly keratin and Brazilian hair treatments to bring their curls under control, while women with straight hair go for expensive spiral perms so they can have lovely locks. Interestingly, this desire for curly hair isn’t a contemporary demand. Even medieval women wanted to curl their tresses.
Back then, women would grind up danewort or dane weed and mix it into oil. They used to apply the mixture to their hair and then tie it to the head with leaves. While it’s probably a much cheaper way of curling our hair, we’d probably skip the oily mixture and head to the salon for a spiral perm.
Natural Makeup
People have been wearing make-up for ages. In fact, it’s estimated that ancient Egyptians were the first to start this trend. And this habit of doing up our faces continued with people during the Middle Ages. Of course, by the time it reached the medieval folk, the habit had changed a bit. Religious values had a bit more weight during the Medieval period, and because of this, vanity was seen as sinful.
Hence, indulging in make-up was a big no-no. Women got around this by using more natural-looking make-up. Women wore foundation made from Lily root and used wine-pulp lip balm to give their lips a darker tint. Interestingly, women often resorted to makeup to hide illness so they would appear healthier.
Lip-Care
Some contemporary cosmetics have a much older history than you’d think. One such example is lip-care products. Nowadays, we can use all kinds of lip balms to stop our lips from being dry and cracking, but even in the Middle Ages, they too had lip-care products. Medieval women used to mix white bryony, red bryony, honey, and rose water. Then, they boiled it and applied it to their lips.
Apparently, the concoction was used to keep their lips soft and remove any cracks or wounds. Of course, it’s not nearly as convenient as contemporary lip balms, but it's quite amazing to think that our medieval counterparts had their own ways of looking after dry lips.
Feminine Hygiene
Even today women complain about their cycles, but we bet that most women would pay an arm and leg to live in the 21st century as opposed to the Middle Ages. Very few things during the Middle Ages were convenient, and the same goes for women’s cycles. While women have plenty of options nowadays, from sanitary pads to moon cups, medieval women generally used rags.
Women in higher rungs of society could throw their rags away, but the poorer women had to wash their rags and reuse them. While there is one week every month that most women don’t look forward to, we can safely say it beats having to use rags – and definitely beats having to wash those rags.
Hair and Beard Dying
Surprisingly, there are several things that are common nowadays but were actually available back in the Middle Ages. Of course, they were available – they just weren’t quite like the products we have nowadays. Instead of going to your local supermarket to buy hair dye or a salon to have your hair dyed, people in the Middle Ages came up with all kinds of concoctions to dye their hair. And believe it all not – men also dyed their beards.
A mixture of Calendine roots, olive madder, oil of cumin seeds, or saffron shavings was used to dye hair blond, gall oak was used for black dye, and tree bark for brown hair. Interestingly, blonde dye was popular even back then. It just goes to show that blonds have always had more fun.