Blame it on the Victorians
Modern women do question attitudes towards their appearance, but if they are in the public eye, they still feel the pressure to look youthful
Sara Zadrozny, tutor for Oxford School of Continuing Education and doctoral researcher on women’s aging in Victorian literature, medicine and culture
When time was not an issue and the future looked like a long promise, I enrolled myself in a class on the history of Milan. The teacher, a middle-aged man with short gray hair and a coral-colored crewneck sweater, created the class out of his personal interest. We didn’t have books, but photocopied handouts. Twenty years and an international relocation later, his Milanese Bestiary: The Stone Zoo, Magic and Astrology in the Culture of the Renaissance in Milan, and History of the Cathedral Square still sit in my library. The handouts are a testament to those fascinating lessons and to the untold pleasure of looking at the stratification of history in the very fabric of the city. Every corner and every stone contained a hint, a symbol, or a story and the teacher, with his quiet talking and Milanese flair, handed us the key to unlock them. I particularly liked to contemplate the birthing place of the cathedral, which has nothing to do with the square where it’s located. It all started just outside one of the medieval city doors, with its mix of orange bricks and gray rocks. Driving by, I always stopped at that door sitting on my black bicycle, marveling at the passers-by as they walked unaware of stepping on the roots of their world-famous monument, Duomo of Milan.
It was in that exact spot that, on a spring day in 1385, the cunning Gian Galeazzo Visconti overturned the ruler of the city, Bernabò Sforza, who was his uncle. Bernabò was sitting on a donkey to witness - and probably mock - the passage of his nephew who had a reputation for being weak and fearful and traveled with his army everywhere. The armed pilgrimage was just a trap as the uncle learned at his expense. To appease the minds of the emerging class of artisans and merchants after the takeover, the new ruler promised to build a new cathedral of “immense proportions.” The works started right away and went on for centuries, incorporating social and political events into its white marble. In the constellation of saints, angels, biblical and mythological creatures that dot the roof of the cathedral, Primo Carnera, portrayed with boxing gloves, competes for attention with a statue of Napoleon standing on a spire. “He looks like a man who just came out of the shower with a towel around his waist,” said our teacher.
Discovering the work of Sara Zadrozny, tutor for Oxford School of Continuing Education and doctoral researcher on women’s aging in Victorian literature, medicine and culture, satisfies that same type of curiosity that brought me to my history class in Milan. By analyzing the work of Catherine Gore, Charles Dickens and Percy Fitzgerald, Sara lifts the veil on the subtle rules that govern the use of make-up and cosmetic surgery in relationship with aging. But again, when you know where to look, you finally see what was hidden in plain sight. As the double standard for aging of women and men.
Your work examines the cultural shift of Victorian time and the implication for aging women’s appearance. Can we take a step back and talk about Baroque make-up first?
In the Georgian era, wealthier older ladies — and men, for that matter — could rely on the socially approved use of heavy make-up to hide any imperfections. English higher society took their lead from French aristocrats who, themselves, wore - as Morag Martin, author of Doctoring Beauty: The Medical Control of Women’s Toilettes in France, 1750–1820 wrote: “thick layers of white paint and large streaks of rouge across their faces, from the corner of the mouth to the tip of the ear.” In late eighteenth-century England, a heavily blanched face was held up as the model of perfection, and thick layers of white paint provided the perfect cover for the effects of disease, blemishes, and wrinkles, giving older women the tools to diminish the signs of aging.
So, basically, the heavy use of cosmetics allowed women to escape sex-ageism?
Wearing this type of make-up allowed women a degree of intergenerational equality; the older lady could use Baroque make-up capable of painting over the lines on her face almost as if it was made of canvas. As Caroline Palmer, author of the paper Brazen Cheek: Face-Painters in Late Eighteenth-Century England pointed out, this level of camouflage was possible because “the ingredients for cosmetics and for artists’ materials were often the same, with identical pigments, such as white lead and carmine.”
Was Baroque make-up used equally by women and men?
Baroque make-up was used in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Baroque make-up was regarded as aristocratic and fashionable, so those who were trying to rise in social status wore it. Women and men showed their respectability and class through this painted white skin. Such make-up did allow men and women to hide their age, but in reality, the class struggle was still a problem. Aging well has always relied on having money to protect an individual from hardship and make-up would have been expensive.
You pointed out that Victorian society interpreted skin as a “tool of moral evaluation” and that the changes in women’s complexion were attributed to moral processes. Can you tell us more?
Victorian dermatologists did have a great deal to say on the subject; tied in with Christian morality around cleanliness, skin was interpreted according to appearance. However, throughout history, women’s aging has always been derided. For example, in ancient Greece, Aristotle and Hippocrates compared the skin of an old woman to dried-out leaves.
Cosmetics could hide the effects of age or disease, and Victorian doctors and authors criticized make-up as unhealthy and immoral, make-up and white or grey hair fell out of favour in the Victorian period, so it became harder to disguise the signs of aging.
Make-up was considered a “weapon” when used by women and doctors dismantled the practice of heavy make-up. What implication did this change have in terms of social control?
The Victorians were developing the science of dermatology from earlier medical practices. Doctors became professional in the nineteenth century, and women were largely excluded from training to be doctors. Female aging came under scrutiny with authors and doctors producing narratives with a suspicion that older women might prolong their sexual attractiveness and use make-up to disguise their motivations. Victorian doctors and authors did criticize women who wore make-up, but this did not stop women wearing cosmetics.
In a youth-focused, commercially-aware period (not unlike our own), women still used products to make themselves more attractive. The doctors knew this, and so they offered them “homemade” recipes as appeasement. This allowed the doctors handbooks to influence women, who in turn, influenced the family. It was how medicine and medical control found its way into the bourgeois family. On a side note, the beauty recipes they offered were often just as toxic.
By inviting women not to conceal their age with “white paints” doctors de facto put a burden on women’s shoulders. Even when women followed the suggestions of Victorian doctors and limited the use of cosmetics, their value was further diminished. Do you agree?
Yes, I agree that the cosmetic double bind was a feature of the period. The removal of make-up offered the opportunity for women’s aging to be scrutinized and judged. That’s the interesting part of this research! On one hand, Victorian doctors and authors present their evidence for why women aged more quickly than men - as if their fate is inescapable. On the other hand, they read the signs of aging in a woman’s skin as evidence of “something she has done wrong.”
The idea of aging as a physical manifestation of wrongdoing is supported by the work of the Victorian dermatologist, Erasmus Wilson. Wilson wrote that while everyone’s skin would inevitably lose elasticity, lines and wrinkles would take on an unattractive and “permanent character” in individuals who had been party to bad actions and who had allowed ‘grosser’ thoughts ‘unrestricted play’. Wilson’s theories are reflected in the work of mid-Victorian authors who imply that even though aging is a natural life stage, its manifestations in women’s complexions are determined by moral, rather than physiological, processes. Largely because of the value placed on youth, Victorian society continued to hold women up to harsher aesthetic judgement.
You wrote about “medical gendered-ageism.” How did it play out in the works of the authors you analyzed?
Mid-Victorian fiction typically presents female characters who are harshly judged for looking older. Ageing heroines are shown to have fallen victim to disproportionate aesthetic changes, and many female characters bemoan their loss of youth. The changes that appear on the skin of ageing female protagonists are often framed as bearing causal links to the way these women have lived their lives. This is because in Victorian literature skin operates as a text to be read, just as Victorian society thought of skin as a tool of moral evaluation.
Today’s cosmetic surgery can be compared to the white paints of the Georgian era. It seems that whatever women do - conceal, manage or age freely - is never okay. What is your take?
We remain Victorians. My research into Victorian novels and medical texts proves to me how closely aligned we remain to the period. Many of the literary, medical, and cultural achievements of the nineteenth century influence the way we think today. The Victorian were just much more direct in their gendered ageism!
It seems that the Victorians had a lot to do with the way we perceive aging women and the double standard that Susan Sontag wrote about. How much of that mid-Victorian perspective are we still carrying with us today?
Susan Sontag was right. We live with the same double bind. Digital filters, cosmetic surgery and make-up all exemplify this. Modern women do question attitudes towards their appearance, but if they are in the public eye, they still feel the pressure to look youthful. If they look youthful past a certain age, then their image is still scrutinized by questions about how they have achieved their look.
I am very surprised that the negative view on aging applied to women rather than men. Do you think it is because the doctors were male?
I think that Victorian patriarchal culture (which informed education, literature and medicine) constructed men and women differently. As part of this, Victorian standards of aesthetics remained more excessive for women. Women’s bodies were believed to be weaker, and more prone to aging. In reality, women have, for the most part, outlived men, however.
