Beauty Patches
Posted by Andrea Jutson on February 21, 1998 at 19:44:57:
In response to Artificial beauty, written by gkb on February 20, 1998 at 18:41:46
Didn't some women wear artificial 'beauty moles' made out of dark sticking plaster?
I think this was an earlier practice (stemming from the seventeenth century, or thereabouts) and originated particularly during the Plague. I think I read somewhere that these beauty patches (I hope these are what you're referring to!) were originally used for covering up scars caused by the illness. (Smallpox, then?) The practice continued (if my memory is correct) into the eighteenth century, but by the turn of the nineteenth century, it had died out. The later Georgians valued "natural" beauty above all else.
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