Trivial Hirsute
by Judy Greenhill
Past Trivial Columns
Ceruse, a cosmetic for painting the skin white, was
popular with women from Egyptian times until the 19th Century. Composed of lead
carbonate (white lead) and lead hydroxide – cumulative poisons that are absorbed
through the skin and stored in the body with deadly results – ceruse not only
irritated the skin, but also corroded the hair at the hairline. Cleopatra, who
applied ceruse to her face, neck and breasts to give herself an ethereal
quality, would likely be well aware of the cosmetic’s hair removal capabilities
and no doubt used it for that purpose.
While hairiness is not necessarily an evil for men it has always been a source
of anguish for women. Consequently, chemical depilatories have always held a
prominent place in the cosmetic cabinets of fashionable mesdames. Elizabeth I of
England, like Cleopatra, who lived 1,600 before her, followed the habit of
smearing her face with a thick layer of ceruse – fully aware of the deadly
poison contained in the makeup. Any unwanted facial hair that escaped the
dissolving action of the white lead was removed with calcium oxide (quicklime),
which was commonly used in tanneries for dehairing hides.
The substance mostly employed as a depilatory in Middle East countries was
orpiment (trisulfide of arsenic), a chemical used for removing warts from horses
and (like quicklime) for depilating animal hides. In 19th century Persia, where
Moslem women were required to depilate their pubic and axilla areas, orpiment
was known as nurch. Writing in Persien, das Land und seine Bewohner,
in 1865, the anthropologist Polak, reported: “The private parts are depilated in
obedience to ritual law by means of a preparation of orpiment mixed with an
equal quantity of calcined chalk, worked up into a paste with rosewater. This is
called hadschebi keschidew, which means submitting to the law . . . but
elegant ladies themselves pluck out the hairs, until they no longer grow any
more.”
In the early 1900s, the best-known depilatories were the sulfide salts, such as
strontium, barium, calcium, and sodium sulfide (more substances used by
tanneries). In the 1930s a proliferation of these sulfide preparations were
advertised as “permanent,” “mild,” “gentle, and safe,” until the American
Medical Association reported, in 1933, that a woman had lost her sight in one
eye after she accidentally got some depilatory in the eye. This kind of bad
press – together with the unavoidable smell of hydrogen sulfide (a not too
pleasant reminder of rotten eggs), which marks the use of sulfide
depilatories–eventually put a damper on sales.
At the same time that the sulfides were under scrutiny for their potentially
harmful effects, women were flocking to the stores to buy a new depilatory,
called Koremlu. This product – which the Journal of the American Medical
Association later revealed had caused numerous cases of baldness, pain, and
paralysis – contained thallium acetate, one of the most toxic of metals, the
salts of which are used to kill rats and ants.
Today, the main ingredient of all depilatories is thioglycolic acid, to which
fragrances can be added – to cover the strong sulfur smell that was impossible
to mask in the old hydrogen sulfide preparations. The depilatories work by
breaking down keratin protein (the basic property of hair), and since there is
eight times more keratin in hair than in skin, the cream acts much more readily
on the hair and leaves the skin relatively unharmed.
But the search for a heavenly perfect hair remover goes on. In China, following
the relaxation of the communist government’s rules of commerce in the early
1980s, a Shanghai newspaper was deluged with inquiries when it reported the
development of a new “hair-killing cream.” The Shanghai No. 9 Pharmaceutical
Factory that developed the depilatory was received more than 200,000 letters.
Being affordable to ordinary Chinese people – a 10-gram tube sold for just 0.50
yuan (about 25 cents) – the depilatory enjoyed a popularity rarely seen in
China. One and a half million tubes of “Second Spring Skin-Brightening Cream”
were sold within a six-month period.
Unfortunately, the exact composition of the cream was kept strictly secret. The
manufacturers would say only that it contained “a depilatory and various kinds
of nutrients which nourish and protect the skin.”
Past Trivial Columns
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