What Made You Ugly In Medieval Times?

Beauty fads come and go - remember super low-rise jeans in the 90s? IYKYK. What was considered cool and beautiful in the medieval period? What skincare routines were medieval people doing? And how did the Black Death affect how people dressed and presented themselves? In this new mini-series, we'll be exploring the beauty standards - and ideas of ugliness - throughout time periods in history. In this second episode Kate is joined by historian and author Dr. Eleanor Janega, co-host of our sister podcast Gone Medieval, to find out why wearing make-up was a crime. This episode was edited by Tim Arstall. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener surveyhere https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. All music from Epidemic Sounds. Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! UK & Ireland listeners please place your vote on the Spotify mobile app here: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kate Lister?

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• 2:14Kate Lister?

  Hello my lovely Betwixters, it's me Kate Lister and you are listening to Betwixt the Sheets and I'm so glad that you are. But before we can continue together, I have to protect you from me, quite frankly, and my guest this time, absolutely, there's no doubt about that. And we do that by giving you the fair dues warning. So here it is. This is an adult podcast, spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects and you should be an adult too. Oh, well, I feel safer. Do you feel safer? Let's do it.

• 2:45Kate Lister?

  Village life as a medieval peasant wasn't all bad, you know. I mean, as long as you don't mind a steady stream of root vegetables in your diet and living in the same room as your livestock and, well, I can't get this mud out of my hair for love nor money. But if you can put that to one side, there are some very pretty things to be found. There are lots of theories out there about how life looked and smelled during the medieval period and most of it tells us it looked and smelt grim. Let's be completely honest. These visual stereotypes present us with quite a hard world and a filthy one at that. So, how did medieval people maintain beauty standards? And what did they have to do to be considered ugly?

• 3:31Speaker 04

  What do you require, madam?

• 3:32Speaker 05

  Oh, money, of course.

• 3:34Speaker 06

  You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you.

• 3:36Speaker 05

  I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing a button.

• 3:48Speaker 04

  Yes, social courtesy does make a difference.

• 3:51Speaker 07

  Goodness, I feel for them. Goodness has nothing to do with it, dearie.

• 4:00Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. Welcome to the latest episode in our mini-series on historical beauty standards and today we are getting medieval. They have a lot of things in common with the ancient Romans, they all loved a pale face, but they do have some very interesting quirks all of their own, such as Christianity, which really takes off in the medieval period and had notions of beauty linked to original sin. Turns out, all that sinning can have a pretty damning effect on a girl's beauty regime. How did they navigate this complete minefield? How were people of colour viewed in the medieval period?

• 4:43Kate Lister?

  And what would a good skincare routine look like back then? Joining us today is the completely beautiful and brilliant author and historian Eleanor Janiger, co-host of our sister podcast Gone Medieval, and we love her very much. Tweezers are ready, everybody, let's do this.

• 5:04Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets. It's Eleanor Janiger, how are you doing?

• 5:10Speaker 08

  I'm very well, Kate, I live here now.

• 5:12Kate Lister?

  This is my house.

• 5:13Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 5:14Kate Lister?

  That's not true.

• 5:16Speaker 08

  Well, you know, it's about to be mine.

• 5:18Kate Lister?

  It's, well, yeah, we can just live here now. This, this is the Betwixt the Sheets slash medievally speaking crossover pad. Thank you for dropping by, though. We are here to talk about medieval beauty standards.

• 5:31Speaker 08

  Oh, there's a one.

• 5:35Speaker 08

  I think it's kind of annoying, though, when you talk about medieval beauty standards is it's kind of like,

• 5:39Kate Lister?

  yes.

• 5:40Speaker 08

  All right, I'm going to talk about medieval things because you can't stop me.

• 5:43Kate Lister?

  Yep.

• 5:43Speaker 08

  No, can't stop, won't stop.

• 5:44Kate Lister?

  Nope.

• 5:45Speaker 08

  But fundamentally, these standards within Europe, and you know, more particularly kind of in the Mediterranean, literal, are pretty much ossified for a really long time. So, you know, yeah, I could be talking about, I don't know, France in the 1300s, but it's also kind of true of like Morocco in like the 10th century, you know?

• 6:06Kate Lister?

  There are some consistent things, what I'm learning, I've, I've been done this little mini-series and doing little time-travelling trips to different places, is there are some constants that like wherever you go, that was an attractive thing. Clear skin, I have yet to find anybody going, actually, we kind of want you to fuck it up a bit. That, that doesn't happen.

• 6:27Speaker 08

  No.

• 6:28Kate Lister?

  Um, healthy, that's like a really big one with maybe a few detours. Remember heroin chic in the 90s?

• 6:34Speaker 08

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:35Kate Lister?

  Remember that one?

• 6:36Speaker 08

  Well, it's back, baby, because the 90s are back, so.

• 6:39Kate Lister?

  No, keep it away.

• 6:40Speaker 08

  Oh.

• 6:41Kate Lister?

  No, I want my high-waisted jeans.

• 6:45Kate Lister?

  But I was also thinking, like, not only there are some constants of, like, healthy, young, that's another one. Again, I have yet to find anyone that thinks as you get older and older, you get more attractive. That doesn't happen. But even if we just think about our lifetimes, how much beauty trends come and go, like in the nineties, right? And I was thinking, because I know it's going to come and torture, and I was making a mental list of beauty fads that have come and gone in our lifetime. Number one, concealer lips.

• 7:14Speaker 08

  Oh, god.

• 7:14Kate Lister?

  Remember them.

• 7:15Speaker 08

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, yeah. And then with, like, the dark liner around.

• 7:19Kate Lister?

  Yes.

• 7:20Speaker 08

  That showgirl's liner, girl, that showgirl's liner.

• 7:22Kate Lister?

  Um, super low-rise jeans.

• 7:25Speaker 08

  Girl, what a horrible time to live through my twenties.

• 7:28Kate Lister?

  You had to shave to put those on.

• 7:30Speaker 08

  It was just, you know, I've emerged into the world, this is what, and they were like, put these on. Oh, by the way, your fly is like two inches long. I mean, it's just like, it was kind of like a notion at that point.

• 7:41Kate Lister?

  And the thong hanging out the back. So we don't do any, and like, the height of sophistication on the red carpet was jeans and a nice top.

• 7:48Speaker 08

  Okay, do you remember, though, at the same time, uh, the jeans under the dress thing?

• 7:51Kate Lister?

  Oh, my god, yes.

• 7:53Speaker 08

  Hideous.

• 7:53Kate Lister?

  Oh, no.

• 7:54Speaker 08

  Sat, oh, yeah.

• 7:55Kate Lister?

  But like, we could do this for a while. But my point is, is that look how much these things come and go in, within a few years. So even though things are constant when it comes to beauty standards, there must have been things coming in and things going out. Because the medieval period, as I've learned from you, is a thousand years of history.

• 8:13Speaker 08

  Mm-hmm, absolutely. And so there are things that we, we don't necessarily know about what's going on at certain periods of time. So like, the early Middle Ages, when we have fewer sources for them, because fifteen hundred years is a really long time ago, you know, and it's hard, it's hard to get sources for that. And also culturally, they just kind of don't write things down, uh, in terms of what descriptions are. So we don't know that much about what's going on in, say, the year six fifty, because no one was like, hey, she is really hot and she looks like this. The thing that they'll do is they'll write down that someone is really beautiful.

• 8:52Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 8:53Speaker 08

  And, and you're like, helpful, thanks, you know, and, and, and that isn't really expanded upon. And this is super common, though, because even if you go back to, for example, the ancient Greeks, and they're like, Helen of Troy, you're like, oh, yeah, okay, the most beautiful woman on earth, and they're like, she's blonde.

• 9:10Kate Lister?

  And that's it.

• 9:11Speaker 08

  And they're like, anything else, they're like, absolutely not. That's just, that's, that's all it takes, baby. And then, you know, even within that, when you're looking at a classical women that are portrayed as beautiful, you know, again, like from things like the Trojan Wars, you'll have like Polysena, and they'll be like, oh yeah, she's not, not too tall.

• 9:32Kate Lister?

  And that's, yeah.

• 9:33Speaker 08

  Yeah, and like.

• 9:34Kate Lister?

  It's not giving you much to work with, is it?

• 9:35Speaker 08

  There's absolutely nothing. So, you know, this isn't a particularly medieval thing. And so, you know, even when we are looking at ancient standards of beauty, we gotta go look at like statues. Right? You know, you, what you need to go find like Aphrodite bathing and things like that. And, you know, these are, these are pretty uniform and, you know, medieval people saw those statues, right? Those are, those are things that they saw with their eyes because it wasn't like they were underground or something. So, you know, that, that must have persisted in some places, but what we definitely know about early medieval beauty standards is they're like, to be beautiful is kind of like to be righteous.

• 10:12Kate Lister?

  I'm sensing that as developing as a theme, you know, this sort of pretty privilege, but on a, on an epic scale of like, if you're beautiful, then you're just a good person.

• 10:23Speaker 08

  Mm hmm, mm hmm. And it's like, these are the things you have all this time, like where this is a legitimate cause for philosophical debate. So people are like, why is it that the chick I really wanna bang uh is also so holy and good? And, and they're like, well, it's because, it's because

• 10:43Speaker 08

  God created the world, right? God created nature. And, you know, God created the Garden of Eden. He created everything that exists. And when we were still in the Garden of Eden, you know, we were, we were close by God. We were just like, woo, in his image, right? And, you know, then things went south.

• 11:00Speaker 08

  Eva ate the pomegranate or the apple or whatever it is you want it to be. We got kicked out, bada bing bada boom. But naturally, things are close to God because God made the physical world. So therefore, things that naturally are beautiful are close to God. And then that's how you kind of get spiritual perfection.

• 11:22Kate Lister?

  That is some mental gymnastics, isn't it? That is a hell of a way of saying we always think that the people we wanna shag are amazing.

• 11:30Speaker 08

  And they are.

• 11:31Kate Lister?

  For a bit.

• 11:32Speaker 08

  I've never, ever wanted to shag some man who was terrible. No.

• 11:37Kate Lister?

  That you learn that later.

• 11:38Speaker 08

  Yeah, put that on record. Always right.

• 11:42Kate Lister?

  Right? That's what happens later and you realize, damn it, the pretty man did it again.

• 11:48Speaker 08

  Curses.

• 11:49Kate Lister?

  The medieval people now, this is, this is thrown a bit of a conundrum my way because what I know from you and your work is that they didn't like pretty women.

• 11:58Speaker 08

  Okay, look, so you can be more than one thing.

• 12:01Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 12:02Speaker 08

  You can be massively horny and also angry about it. Like since time in a memorial, men have been mad that chicks are pretty.

• 12:09Kate Lister?

  There we go.

• 12:09Speaker 08

  Right?

• 12:10Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 12:10Speaker 08

  And then it goes back to Eve in like these theological conceptions because like one of the things about Eve and pictures that you see of Eve, absolute stone cold baddie. Right? Like just a dime piece, like always, always upholding the beauty standards of the time because of course she does because she's in the Garden of Eden.

• 12:29Kate Lister?

  And they have makeup counters.

• 12:30Speaker 08

  Yes. Just picking the lip gloss off of the trees. Um, so it's, uh, but it is like one of these things where of course she's a spiritual perfection at the time. And then also this is, you know, the opportunity that you have to paint a hot naked chick. So like, let, let us not.

• 12:48Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 12:49Speaker 08

  You know, forget that, that there are, there are ways to just kind of like have some fun with this, right? So she is always going to be portrayed as like really, really beautiful, but she's also the vector for which sin came into the world.

• 13:02Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 13:03Speaker 08

  You know, she's also the reason why we have death. She's, you know, she's the cause of original sins. So very particularly a hot chick did all this.

• 13:13Kate Lister?

  Yeah. You wouldn't have had a five doing this, would you?

• 13:17Speaker 08

  No, absolutely no mids. It's just like, this is, this is hot chick behavior.

• 13:21Kate Lister?

  This is, this is hot chick.

• 13:23Speaker 08

  Yeah, like, you know, the, you know, all her friends are like, honestly, girl, work, you know, like, ooh, she's so dramatic. She is the drama, et cetera. But I mean, fundamentally, this also is linked to the fact that.

• 13:37Speaker 08

  The beauty then becomes sexual.

• 13:39Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 13:40Speaker 08

  Because part of the fall of man isn't just that Adam and Eve realize they're naked, right? It's that they realize they're naked and they're turned on by it.

• 13:48Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 13:49Speaker 08

  So because, you know, like they just didn't know to be turned on before. So like this being attracted, that's kind of like the next step. That's, that's the issue, right?

• 14:00Kate Lister?

  And you get this weird cognitive distance that arrives. It's not just in the medieval period that you see this is that they want women to be beautiful, but not aware that they're beautiful because then that's bad. They want them to be sexually attractive, but not too much. And they can't flaunt that at any point. Uh, they need to be unbelievably beautiful, but also innocent. What we would now call the no makeup makeup.

• 14:24Speaker 08

  Mm hmm.

• 14:25Kate Lister?

  Look, just completely natural, like long tresses of blonde hair, not made up. I think a really good example of that is in the Canterbury Tales.

• 14:35Speaker 08

  Mm hmm.

• 14:36Kate Lister?

  When you've got, so you've got the Miller's Tale and he describes this eighteen year old girl called Alison.

• 14:41Speaker 08

  They're all Alison.

• 14:42Kate Lister?

  They're all, there's so many Alison to know. It's like, trust them, pick another name. Um, and she is kinda slutty and she's like really heavily made up. And he really goes to town describing her like, like slow eyebrows and like her hair's pulled back. And she's got like, like loads of pleats on her and stuff. And then, and then there's the knight's tale where another girl is described. And she is described as like also very beautiful, but it's a very different type.

• 15:10Speaker 08

  Hmm.

• 15:10Kate Lister?

  Of beauty. It's not made up. It's just like not like doves and bluebirds follow her around singing songs. And she's, she literally skips through gardens singing, doesn't she?

• 15:21Speaker 08

  Yeah. And I mean, this is what medieval people would tell you is true beauty.

• 15:24Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 15:25Speaker 08

  So it is a hundred percent that you're just supposed to be beautiful. Just be beautiful. Just be, there is an ossified beauty archetype.

• 15:33Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 15:33Speaker 08

  And by the way, if you don't live up to this, we think you're sinful and evil. But I swear to God, girl, if you pluck your eyebrows.

• 15:41Kate Lister?

  Trouble. No, then you're a bad woman.

• 15:43Speaker 08

  Which also I think it's really funny because medieval people are constantly talking about like chicks. Eyebrows and how hot their eyebrows are. And I remember it did like a few years ago. Do you remember when there was like the really like

• 15:53Kate Lister?

  Really heavy brows.

• 15:54Speaker 08

  And there would be videos from men being like, no man has ever been attracted to eyebrows. I'm like, baby, actually, we got a hundred years of history where men are like, oh, you see the eyebrows on that one.

• 16:05Kate Lister?

  Eyebrow trends do come and go.

• 16:07Speaker 08

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 16:08Kate Lister?

  And definitely Alison in The Miller's Tale, she get her eyebrows get a mention.

• 16:12Speaker 08

  Mm hmm. And so eyebrows become this particular sight of worry for men, obviously. Because they're like, I go, I hope that her arch, they have to be arched and hopefully black. Right. You're supposed to be blonde with black eyebrows, you know, that thing.

• 16:29Kate Lister?

  That that happens.

• 16:30Speaker 08

  That thing that exists without makeup.

• 16:31Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 16:32Speaker 08

  Um, yeah, absolutely. And so this, there's a particular story about this where there's a guy who he's very in love with his wife. Uh, and she was so beautiful and like wonderful, but she dies, you know, in the way that people do. So he pays this monk who can have ecstatic visions to like, go check in on his wife in the afterlife and tell him how he's doing. So Monk takes the money, has ecstatic vision and comes back. He's like, yeah, your wife is in hell. And your wife is in hell and demons are gnawing at her eyebrows and at her hairline. Because you thought she was beautiful, but actually she plucked her eyebrows and her hairline.

• 17:12Speaker 08

  And so now the her ironic punishment in the afterlife is that demons gnaw the places that she used to pluck. And it's like, so, but your wife kind of sucked, actually, I think you'll find it. But it's like, not only is there this real pressure to have these specific eyebrows, but if you do anything about it, you're going to hell. And it's because makeup or any kind of intervention.

• 17:38Speaker 08

  Is seen as a form of trickery.

• 17:41Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 17:42Speaker 08

  Like to the point where there are laws on the books, like here in London, where if you find out that a sex worker that you frequented was using makeup, that's fraud and you can go ask for your money back.

• 17:51Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 17:52Speaker 08

  I mean, granted, you're gonna be laughed out of the stews, but.

• 17:54Kate Lister?

  Holy hell, yes, yeah. You, uh, did anyone ever enforce that?

• 17:59Speaker 08

  I mean, good luck, right? You know, but, but it's on the books, right? So like in, in theory, that's in there. And so the idea is like, well, this is false advertising. You're not really beautiful because to.

• 18:09Kate Lister?

  So would you want me to come home and meet your mother? Jesus, like, what do you mean? Like, it's, you're paying for a quick shag up against the wall.

• 18:14Speaker 08

  I know. And it's just like, oh my God, like, I'm, I'm sorry. Like, were you writing love poetry to this woman? She does not care. Right? Like, this is a businesswoman. Thank you very much. But it's, it's wild.

• 18:24Kate Lister?

  And you're no six foot two either, partner.

• 18:25Speaker 08

  I know. Hmm. I mean, like, and to the point where, you know, when you have poor Alison in The Miller's Tale, they're like, and she thinks she's really hot. And I'm like, yeah, I mean, you're still kind of like literarily wanking over her.

• 18:36Kate Lister?

  Like, really quite intensely as well.

• 18:38Speaker 08

  Yeah. And so it's, it's sort of like you are making her into a figure of fun, but you still think she's hot.

• 18:44Kate Lister?

  Yes.

• 18:44Speaker 08

  But she's the wrong kind of hot.

• 18:45Kate Lister?

  But don't we do that today? That's still, still a bind that, that women are in today. Point in case, Kardashians.

• 18:52Speaker 08

  Hmm.

• 18:52Kate Lister?

  I love to return to them again and again.

• 18:54Speaker 08

  Always.

• 18:54Kate Lister?

  But they occupy that same space of like, they're judged for how they look, but they also influence how people look. We also hate them for what they do and how they're made up and artificial, but they're also adored for it and they make them. And it becomes really weird and complex. And it's that same artifice that people in the medieval period got angry about.

• 19:14Speaker 08

  Oh yeah, absolutely. Where the, the trouble here is that these people are aware.

• 19:20Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 19:20Speaker 08

  And that, and that's a big part of it. As you mentioned, it's like, you're not supposed, you know, to, to quote One Direction. You don't know you're beautiful, right? Like, that's the thing that you're supposed to be doing is that you're just supposed to meet this standard and also be blithely unaware of.

• 19:34Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 19:35Speaker 08

  All of society.

• 19:36Kate Lister?

  Am I really beautiful?

• 19:38Speaker 08

  Oh, wow. I didn't, I didn't notice that I looked like every single statue in the church.

• 19:42Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 19:43Speaker 08

  Like every painting I've ever seen. And also no one's ever mentioned this to me, like in a society completely obsessed with the way that women look.

• 19:51Kate Lister?

  And if you can be unsexual as well, that's a help. Just going back against the counter, because Emily. A really beautiful one with the bluebirds tweeted. Uh, she wanted to be a virgin all her life. She wanted to be a priestess of someone or other, some virgin goddess. So like the idea as well that you're, you're not even supposed to be sexual. You're just this.

• 20:09Speaker 08

  Hmm.

• 20:09Kate Lister?

  Beautiful Disney princess wandering around.

• 20:12Speaker 08

  Well, like we see this, for example, um, in the pearl poem as well. So, you know, in the pearl poem, the like little girl dies and she's like two. And then her dad sees her in heaven and she's like a sixteen year old hottie.

• 20:24Kate Lister?

  Uncomfortable.

• 20:25Speaker 08

  Yeah. And it's, and he's like, oh, isn't it great that she's so hot? And it's because, you know, she's kept the spiritual perfection. Because she was a virgin and she died and da, da, da, and she never did anything wrong. And so there's this idea that our souls, when they go to heaven. And indeed, like when we rise from the grave on judgment day, our bodies are going to be at the height of their powers. Like we're going to be. We're going to be as good as we are. And so hilariously for women, this is like, yeah, sixteen, like, you know, you're supposed to be a maiden. Which means like you've achieved sexual maturity, but you haven't had sex yet.

• 20:55Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 20:56Speaker 08

  And for men, it's middle age.

• 20:58Kate Lister?

  Oh, for fuck's sake.

• 20:59Speaker 08

  I know, right? So like, go look at, go look at any, uh, you know, picture of the last judgment and everyone, all the little naked souls getting up out of their graves. It's a bunch of baddies and then like middle aged dudes.

• 21:10Kate Lister?

  Do you wanna be sixteen again? What an awful idea that is.

• 21:12Speaker 08

  Oh my God. It's like, have you ever spoken to a sixteen year old girl also?

• 21:16Kate Lister?

  Never want to go through that nonsense again.

• 21:18Speaker 08

  You know, like it is horrifying times.

• 21:21Kate Lister?

  That is not judgment day shit. Let me be sixteen in my swamp witch era.

• 21:26Speaker 08

  I mean, look, let me tell you also, like, as you know, a noted elder millennial, we definitely lived through that with like Britney Spears. For example, where it was like, look at her and then they would like parade her around and be like, say you're a virgin, say it, do it. It's like while they're like, and also take all your clothes off and please gyrate, you know, and, and, and it was like a really weird time to be alive. Where you're just like, huh, this thing of kind of simultaneously commodifying women who haven't had sex yet. Um, but sexualizing them. So it's like, they can't be sexual, but you're going to be sexual at them. And so.

• 22:01Kate Lister?

  You're gonna creep all over them.

• 22:02Speaker 08

  Yeah, exactly. And then like every woman who like notices that this is happening, it's like your fault for noticing. You're just supposed to be blithely unaware.

• 22:10Kate Lister?

  So this is a kind of why they have this link of if you're beautiful, you must be spiritually pure somehow. Because the ideal beauty is somehow unaware and innocent. What the fuck happens when you get older? You're only sixteen for one year. That's all you get at being sixteen. You've got a long way to go after that.

• 22:31Speaker 08

  Well, luckily you'll be a mommy soon. And then all your worries are over.

• 22:36Kate Lister?

  And then you don't need to be attracted.

• 22:37Speaker 08

  That you don't need to be attracted because now you're a mommy.

• 22:39Kate Lister?

  Ooh.

• 22:39Speaker 08

  It's not your mommy. And like, and this is, although, you know, obviously there are cases where this doesn't happen. So, you know, very famously Eleanor of Aquitaine is incredibly hot. And everyone is like stupid sexy Eleanor of Aquitaine. Like, and they're so angry about it. Because like she's like really, really hot and doesn't behave like they want her to behave. And you know, there's constantly rumors swirling as a result. They're like, oh, she's shagging her uncle. You know, she's dead and two hundred years later, they're like, she was shagging Saladin. It's like, homie, how? Literally, how did that happen? You know, and, and like, these are things that even the Victorians are repeating later. So there are women who continue to meet the beauty standard later. And when they enter the record, people are furious.

• 23:24Speaker 08

  They're like, no, you're not supposed to be doing that anymore because you're supposed to kind of like transcend. You're supposed to get into motherhood and then this is going to be like a moot point. And, you know, then people will say you were an excellent wife, you were an excellent mother. But still, having said that, it's like medieval literary tradition is absolutely full of people's really hot wives. Who are like cuckolding them or not.

• 23:46Kate Lister?

  Wife of Bath?

• 23:46Speaker 08

  Wife of Bath.

• 23:47Kate Lister?

  Is she hot? I'm just, she has a very detailed description. She's another Alison.

• 23:52Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 23:52Kate Lister?

  She's forty, all of forty years old. And, oh my god, oh my god.

• 23:59Speaker 08

  Uh, couldn't you imagine?

• 24:00Kate Lister?

  And she, um, she's got a gap between her teeth. I remember that.

• 24:03Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 24:04Kate Lister?

  She is slightly red in the face.

• 24:06Speaker 08

  Mm hmm. Which is good.

• 24:07Kate Lister?

  Which is, that, that's good?

• 24:08Speaker 08

  So, so what you want is you want white skin, but rosy cheeks. And oftentimes in literary sources, it's referred to as a complexion of snow and roses.

• 24:19Kate Lister?

  Oh, wow.

• 24:19Speaker 08

  Which is very.

• 24:20Kate Lister?

  Okay, okay.

• 24:21Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 24:22Kate Lister?

  So she's got that the gap tooth, I remember that, that she's got a gap between her teeth. I can't remember what her eyebrows were like. Is she a sexy figure? She talks about sex all the time.

• 24:32Speaker 08

  It's really difficult to say because she's sexualized.

• 24:35Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 24:36Speaker 08

  Certainly, and I think that it's very difficult to not then kind of like put her in sexy situations as a result. But she's kind of representing people's worry about widows, more particularly even though, you know, she's a wife at this per- this point in her life. But this idea that, you know, older women are sexually aware of what they want, their experience, and they have money.

• 24:57Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 24:57Speaker 08

  So they can kind of pick and choose what they want to do. They can marry men for whatever reason they wish to. Or not, you know, so they then you get into this kind of like limbo where there's this specific worry about widows. Where it's like, oh, these widows are out here being hot and, you know, like they they are out of control. You know, they don't have fathers to shove them in one way or another, or brothers, you know, like maybe your sons can be like, mom, knock it off. But, you know, they're they're just gonna do what they do. So there is also this kind of like moral gray area that they fall into.

• 25:32Kate Lister?

  Okay, all right, that's that's interesting, but not they're not regarded as beautiful in the same way as.

• 25:38Speaker 08

  No, I mean, because it like to be young is to be beautiful within a lot of these things. I mean, if you look at the Decameron, for example, there's just endless stories of cuckolding. It's just like, that's that's all there is. And, you know, also stories of like a really beautiful women who are kind of younger. So, you know, for example, you got the story of it's the it's the king of Babylon, which is Egypt. To like, do not look, I can't explain it to you. And she's really hot and is supposed to get married off to the king of the Algarve. And gets set on a boat and like the boat shipwrecks. And then there's like a series of stories where every man who comes into contact with her is like, oh, like, you know, they they don't talk on the floor.

• 26:20Speaker 08

  It it becomes a cartoon world. And they like are all killing each other and kidnapping her. And then like the minute you show her a dick, she's like, oh, well. Well, I guess this is fine. You know, and it's like, it's absolutely incredible. Right. And so she kind of gets past like from hand to hand through like, I think, eight different dudes.

• 26:38Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 26:39Speaker 08

  Um, and then like eventually finds her way home to her father and makes up this great story about how she was, uh, uh, actually, uh, the whole time, like, do not worry, Dad, virginity intact, because I was hanging out at the nunnery of Saint Crescent in the hole.

• 26:55Kate Lister?

  Of course you were.

• 26:56Speaker 08

  Yeah. Uh, great, great little euphemism there. Um, and you know, like, we are Muslim, but you know, these Christians safeguarded me in any way I can marry the prince of the Algarve. And he's like, you sure can. And this is a story of a woman who's kind of like in her teens to twenties. And they're like, she maintains her beauty and her sexuality all throughout these subsequent changes of sexual partners. And to the point where she's like married off with all honors in the end. And it's kind of like a happily ever after. So what we learn is that there are these sort of conceits where it's like, oh, you're supposed to be holy in order to be beautiful. You've got to be a 16 year old. You need to be a virgin in theory. In practice, if we're seeing what people actually do and what's going on with their lives, there's a lot more room for interpretation about

• 27:40Speaker 08

  where beauty lies and whether or not, you know, sexual women are indeed sexy. Uh, because in this case, yes, absolutely.

• 27:52Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Eleanor after this short break.

• 28:05Kate Lister?

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• 31:11Kate Lister?

  I feel like we should finish up by talking about men being attractive. Because this conversation always focuses on women because they're the ones that have had the pressure put on them to look a certain way. But men feel the pressure too. What was a medieval male hottie?

• 31:27Speaker 08

  Oh, well, so the medieval male hottie, as a general rule of thumb, a little bit muscular, but a little bit of meat on the bones. You know, they go for, they go for like, ooh, there's food in the house.

• 31:39Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 31:39Speaker 08

  Right? You know, like that's hot. So if you've got like a little bit of a belly, that like, that's, that's no problem. Do not worry about that. And there is like a lot of like men kind of like exercising to exercise and like, you know, to maintain their figure. So it's like quite cute, like there is, do you even lift, bro? In the medieval period, but they're just like picking up big rocks. Like, it's a lot more like a strong man competition. It's very amazing. So there'll be like exercise regimens and things like that. And the other big one is like being clean.

• 32:07Kate Lister?

  Clean, that's a constant.

• 32:08Speaker 08

  Yeah, everybody likes it when you're clean. So there's like rather a lot of that. You got to like comb your hair, brush your teeth.

• 32:13Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 32:14Speaker 08

  All of those things.

• 32:14Kate Lister?

  Don't stink.

• 32:15Speaker 08

  Yeah, exactly. So that, you know, there's rather a lot of that. And then dress is a big one.

• 32:19Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 32:20Speaker 08

  So one big difference, I think, between now and with medieval men is medieval men be showing it off, right? Like, it becomes a huge issue in the 14th century when the Black Death is going on. Because a lot of men are like, look, if I'm gonna die tomorrow. I'm wearing hose, right? And they're like, they got it out, like, they're like, wearing super, super pointy shoes. And the bishops in England are furious and they're writing about this. They're like, God, it's punishing us with the Black Death because these men are wearing tights. And, and like, everything that we see has them like, wearing tights. And then, but then there's kind of like this, these equivalent of women shouldn't wear makeup is you shouldn't go too crazy on the clothes.

• 33:01Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 33:01Speaker 08

  So like, if your tights are party colored, so like, they are green and purple or something like that. I mean, well, probably not purple. Only kings can wear purple. But I don't know, green and red, right? Like, that is like, really pushing the button. That's too much. And it's like, everyone agrees it's sexy, but it's like, gauche.

• 33:18Kate Lister?

  I've noticed that there's a lot of discussion around men's legs. That's

• 33:22Speaker 08

  Oh, yeah.

• 33:23Kate Lister?

  That's one of the things. You don't say that as much. It'd be a bit weird if you did say that. Nice legs on a guy. Like, it wouldn't be like, you know, institutionable behavior. But like, you just don't say that about them today.

• 33:34Speaker 08

  I mean, people would go, I mean, I suppose. But like, yeah, like, medieval men do not skip leg day.

• 33:39Kate Lister?

  No, they, big thing about legs.

• 33:40Speaker 08

  Yeah. And because they're wearing tights and things, right? And so it's, it's one of these things that's interesting with clothes theory, where it's kind of like, chicken or the egg situation is like, dude, we find legs sexy and so men were wearing tights. Or were men, you know, like, did the finding men's legs sexy come out of the wearing tights thing?

• 34:00Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 34:00Speaker 08

  So, and I mean, then, especially in the later medieval period and into the early modern period, could throw a codpiece on that.

• 34:06Kate Lister?

  Yes. Yeah, that was a weird

• 34:08Speaker 08

  Uh huh.

• 34:09Kate Lister?

  moment in fashion history, that one.

• 34:11Speaker 08

  You know?

• 34:12Kate Lister?

  Remember the first time I saw a codpiece? I thought it would just be like, like a cup that, you know, rugby players wear. It's just full on penis. You can hang things off that.

• 34:20Speaker 08

  Absolutely. And, you know, it goes to show that medieval people and early modern people are a lot less prudish than we are. They're just like, I know you're looking at it, so I'm gonna make it look like that. That's that's what's going on, you know, and so there are a lot, a lot more comfort around the genital area. But then there are kind of, I guess, some surprising things that medieval people do, like, uh, bald men are kind of sexy.

• 34:41Kate Lister?

  Really?

• 34:41Speaker 08

  For example, it's because they're very manly, they're very masculine. The idea is they are so hot and dry, which makes them very masculine, that their hair is burnt off. So it's like a humorily, there's kind of like nothing wrong with being bald, like unless you're bald because you're old. Like it's like, it's like a young bald guy thing. It's like, you know, if you've got the

• 35:01Kate Lister?

  Like a Jason Statham.

• 35:03Speaker 08

  Jason Statham. Call me.

• 35:05Kate Lister?

  If you want to sponsor this

• 35:06Speaker 08

  It's fine. It'll be fine. Um, so, you know, like this, this is a thing that universally is kind of like agreed is pretty hot, but it's interestingly like scientific. You know, now when like weirdo evoc psychologists will be like, well, we've always found exactly the same thing attractive about women, which is hour glasses. And I'm like, no, dude, like absolutely not. No, it was hair shapes for Europeans. Anyway, like they were like, well, scientifically bald men are hot because uh, the humors. And it means basically exactly the same thing as evoc psychologists going off on one now. So, you know, like you can treat it with as much respect, right?

• 35:43Kate Lister?

  So if you're a medieval person and you wanna, you want a decent skincare routine, very important, still important to everybody today, cleanse, tone, moisturize, but you didn't have that so much if you're in a medieval person, what would be your go-to routine?

• 35:59Speaker 08

  Well, we actually have recipes and routines that are left to us from a couple of different sources. One of which is our girl Hildegard von Bingen.

• 36:07Kate Lister?

  I like her.

• 36:08Speaker 08

  She was a skincare girlie.

• 36:10Kate Lister?

  I love that.

• 36:11Speaker 08

  Yeah, like she leaves us like toner recipes. She's like, girl, this is how you make barley water, which uh, to me was always kind of just like a Mary Poppins, the musical reference. But it's like a toner thing. So you know, in the way where we'll use kind of like colloidal oatmeal now, like in order to like moisturize. So you can do the same thing with barley. So she would be like, this is what you do, girl. Take the barley, boil it up, put the water on your skin, it'll soften it and it will, you know, and, and this is something that's really available uh, to most women.

• 36:37Kate Lister?

  I've seen barley skincare scrubs and things available in shops.

• 36:41Speaker 08

  Yeah, exactly. So that a hundred percent existed at the time. We also have like, if you have a little bit more money, a lot more skincare recipes that survived to us in the trotula. And so this is kind of like, you know, it starts out as an OBGYN manual and then people are like, and also.

• 36:57Speaker 08

  Makeup tips. You know, so this has lots and lots of different recipes for all sorts of things. Um, how to treat sunburn, um, good moisturizers to use after you're out in the sun, um, softer cleansers for your face, because there is kind of some acknowledgement of the fact that your skin might get a little bit rough if you're just using sort of like the soap that you're using on the rest of your body. So they will be like, oh, you know, add rose petals, add honey. There's rather a lot of adding honey to things in order to put it on your skin. There's also more extreme things. So for example, there's rather a lot of stuff that is like, want to bleach your skin? Bleach your skin tonight, queen? Bleaching your skin?

• 37:35Kate Lister?

  No.

• 37:36Speaker 08

  And it's like a big concern for medieval women, because especially like within the Mediterranean and European context, eh, pale skin is a really big beauty standard.

• 37:48Kate Lister?

  They love pale skin. Everyone seems to have been absolutely nuts for that until like the nineteen fifties.

• 37:53Speaker 08

  Oh, yeah, absolutely. And essentially what it boils down to is that is a preference for rich ladies.

• 37:59Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 37:59Speaker 08

  Right? Because like if you're a peasant and you're out working in the field all the time, your skin's gonna get messed up because they don't have SPF, right? And they know the sun will burn you and they're like, mm, or whatever. So being tan is a sign that you were like some poor peasant.

• 38:12Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 38:13Speaker 08

  Who works outside, right? Whereas being very, very pale is a sign that you got the kind of money where you don't have a job outside.

• 38:18Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 38:18Speaker 08

  Right? So that's very attractive. And that's across the board. Like, you know, you see that as much in Arabic poetry about beautiful women as you do French poetry about the same thing. So that as a result creates a demand in skincare routines for skin whitening products, um, some of which look pretty horrible. Like you'll see examples in the trachular where they're like, yeah, put some quick lime in there, girl. And I'm like, do not put quick lime on your face.

• 38:44Kate Lister?

  No.

• 38:44Speaker 08

  Right? So, but it does kind of show us how there are some things that would absolutely work in terms of skincare. And then there are some where it's just like, you are so off piece right now. But it's to try to live up to this really difficult standard where, you know, most people are outside all the time and they want to be pale.

• 39:02Kate Lister?

  I think that this could be one of the periods in history where actually to be skint means that you'd probably have the better. Beauty products because you couldn't afford

• 39:11Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 39:11Kate Lister?

  Lye or whatever the hell it was that you had to put on your face. You'd probably be better off with some barley and something you found in a bush.

• 39:17Speaker 08

  Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're bang on there where that stuff is kind of universally available. It's going to be more about like whether or not you've got the time to do it because like they're not the ones who are attempting to make blonde hair dye.

• 39:29Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 39:30Speaker 08

  Right? You know, which, you know, exists absolutely. Like they've figured out ways to bleach your hair and that kind of a thing. Uh, but you know, it's rough.

• 39:37Kate Lister?

  What about smelling good? Cause one of the persistent myths about folk from the Middle Ages, as you are well aware, is that they were all dirty and that they all stunk and no one had any teeth.

• 39:48Speaker 08

  Yeah, well, uh, no. So hundred percent actually. Teeth is one of the big ones where medieval people probably had better teeth than we do now.

• 39:56Kate Lister?

  About teeth a lot.

• 39:57Speaker 08

  Yeah, they do. And it's like, one of the things we have to keep in mind is that they don't really have access to sugar.

• 40:03Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 40:03Speaker 08

  In the way that we do now. So most of our sugar is now coming from like sugarcane and stuff like that. And it certainly existed in medieval Europe, but it's coming to you in much smaller amounts. And it comes from very far away and it's mad expensive. So you're just not eating sugar in every single thing in the way that we are now, which is the stuff that makes your teeth go wild, right? And they brush their teeth. Uh, so they've got toothbrushes or they'll use kind of like little like licorice roots, things like that in order to like brush the stuff. And to be fair, toothpaste didn't work until the 1950s, until we invented fluoride. Whatever you were brushing your teeth with, it's like, well, I hope you're having fun. Like it makes your breath smell nice, but that's all it does.

• 40:46Speaker 08

  So honestly, if you compared the teeth of a medieval person with a person in the 1930s, probably the person in the medieval period is going to have better teeth because they have fewer things that are going to mess their teeth up.

• 41:03Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Eleanor after a short break.

• 41:20Speaker 11

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• 42:16Kate Lister?

  What about being ugly, then? Like, we've been spoken a lot about being beautiful. Ugly seems to be another one of those consistent things, like disfigurement scar. They must have had a fair bit of disfigurement wandering around in the Middle Ages.

• 42:31Speaker 08

  Oh, yeah, you know, you have issues, for example, like with leprosy, for example, is fairly endemic and common across Europe at the time, which can be pretty disfiguring. You know, if you come down with any diseases where you might end up with like pox marks. We don't have smallpox or things like that yet, but, you know, if you've got like chickenpox or something like that, that can really mess you up. Or, you know, even if you just end up having acne, you know, and your skin gets scarred. These are all things that are going to count against you. And certainly... It is a specific thing where ugliness will be associated with evil, right? Like where if you're not hot, well, then you must be evil.

• 43:12Speaker 08

  And then that gives me a reason why I'm allowed to kind of exclude you from society. So we see this in particular with people who have leprosy because they will be like, well, they kind of were asking for it, right? So there is this way of talking about people with leprosy as though they brought it on themselves because they were lustful, they were gluttonous, they are garrulous. They're just like shagging and fighting all the time and that's how you end up with leprosy. So the idea is that they were sinful, which is why they've ended up ugly like this. And then that just-

• 43:42Kate Lister?

  That seems mean.

• 43:43Speaker 08

  Yeah, it's really mean and it just gives you carte blanche to just kind of be a bit of a dickhead to people who are having a really tough time.

• 43:49Kate Lister?

  That's a cheap shot, medieval people.

• 43:51Speaker 08

  I know. Look, I like them very much, but I didn't say they were perfect.

• 43:55Kate Lister?

  They're not, they're not as bad as the Romans. They're hands down the maddest, most cruel. If something's not being killed, quite frankly, they're not having a good time. What about fat and thin in the medieval periods? Because that's something that fluctuates as well, where like body shape, fat ratio.

• 44:13Speaker 08

  Yeah, so we want some fatness, like you know-

• 44:16Kate Lister?

  They like a little bit of swish, don't they?

• 44:18Speaker 08

  Yeah, so like for the body standard for women remains pretty much ossified. And the thing that they are looking for is they want tiny little tits.

• 44:26Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 44:27Speaker 08

  The smallest boobs available, right? Like as Cameron talks about like hot chicks boobs and they're like, they're small and hard like ivory, yowza, right? That's so that's what they're looking for. But you want what they call a luscious little pot belly.

• 44:41Kate Lister?

  I can do that.

• 44:42Speaker 08

  Yeah, so that's hot. That's really hot. And then like junk in the trunk. You gotta be packing heat back there, okay? So we're, we're looking for a pear shape.

• 44:53Kate Lister?

  Done.

• 44:54Speaker 08

  And that's what they want. So it's kind of like, it wouldn't necessarily be like obese or anything, but they definitely want you to have- Flesh.

• 45:02Kate Lister?

  Cushion for the pushers.

• 45:03Speaker 08

  Yeah, and you know, again, this is one of these things where it's like that means that there's like money.

• 45:07Kate Lister?

  Yeah, it's weird how much beauty and still today.

• 45:10Speaker 08

  Mm hmm.

• 45:11Kate Lister?

  If you wanna look hot like a Vogue model, you know, like the money.

• 45:16Speaker 08

  Yeah, exactly. And we change whatever it is we think is hot to be whatever is the most difficult or expensive thing to acquire. So you know, when everyone couldn't afford a Brazilian butt lift, the Kardashians have big old boots.

• 45:29Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 45:30Speaker 08

  And thank God for that, all right?

• 45:32Kate Lister?

  And until quite recently, being overweight went from being something that only rich people could have because they could afford the food to actually now it's a sign of not having enough enough money and not being able to eat right and go to the gym. I wonder what's gonna happen with the dawning of Ozempic. What will happen now?

• 45:51Speaker 08

  Well, yeah, we're already seeing, I think, this backlash where we are getting like thinner and thinner women now again being posited as, you know.

• 46:00Kate Lister?

  Don't do it. Don't go back to.

• 46:01Speaker 08

  I know, girl. I know, but, but and again, we're doing the same thing now with the way that we talk about diet or the way that we talk about fat as medieval people do with beauty, right? Where we really associate fatness with like some kind of moral inferiority.

• 46:16Kate Lister?

  Control.

• 46:17Speaker 08

  Yeah, oh, well, you lack self-control and you're unable.

• 46:20Kate Lister?

  Just do less, just go to the gym.

• 46:21Speaker 08

  Oh, yeah, as though that has anything to do with how bodies work and like all of the science tells you that that's absolute junk.

• 46:27Kate Lister?

  Well, thank you for fixing that, Steve. Cheers for that.

• 46:30Speaker 08

  And it's just like, but we love to do it. You know, there, there's something that our society just really enjoys to do, which is place a moral weight on what we consider attractive, as though what we consider attractive doesn't change.

• 46:42Kate Lister?

  Yeah, that's so true. Fat shape. Yeah, when you look at our attitude with fat today, I think you can actually get your head around a lot of historical attitudes with this linking of moral worth with how you look. And what about race? Because one of the the interesting things to come out of historical research in the past thirty years or so is is that historians suddenly went, did anyone check on the black people?

• 47:06Speaker 08

  Mm hmm.

• 47:07Kate Lister?

  And then someone went, oh, fuck, no, we didn't. They're all here.

• 47:10Speaker 08

  Damn.

• 47:10Kate Lister?

  Shit.

• 47:11Speaker 08

  Well, you know, a really great place to go see hot black people is one of my favorite paintings of all time, which is Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights.

• 47:20Kate Lister?

  Well, that is that is a scene that he painted.

• 47:23Speaker 08

  Yeah, it is. It really, really is. And you can see very many hot naked people, some of whom are black. And it's hilarious because they're just like, they look exactly the same, but they are black.

• 47:34Kate Lister?

  I love that.

• 47:35Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 47:35Kate Lister?

  It's not true. I'm being very flippant, but it's not true that people in the Middle Ages would have only thought that white people existed. They were much more multicultural and diverse than than we give them credit for.

• 47:46Speaker 08

  God, yeah. And I mean, like, especially places here like London, we know that there are lots of Africans around the shop. And honestly, it just makes us look like we suck here in Europe if you think that there aren't black people about. I'm like, dude, people wanted to come here. Like, you know, there's a lot of trade back and forth. People are moving around all the time. And all you have to do is like, sit down and read a medieval book. And they'll be like, oh, and then this person went on a voyage to wherever. And they talk about it all the time in these really matter of fact ways. They talk about what the trade routes are. And people move along those routes just as much as goods do. So we we know that a hundred percent you're coming into contact with other races. You know, probably, they will do some light racism at you if you are black, especially

• 48:31Speaker 08

  because there is such a premium put on light skin. But we also know that they clearly think that these people are hot, which is why they get included in stuff like The Garden of Earthly Delights, where they're like, I want to make a big hot fruit orgy scene. There's gonna be birds, real birds, and like women, birds, and some of them are black and they are also hot and sexy. And in my ideal garden orgy with giant berries, there will be black women as well. So there you go.

• 49:00Kate Lister?

  So there might have been a sort of, it is still a type of racism, but an eroticizing of people that weren't white.

• 49:07Speaker 08

  Yeah, I mean, a hundred percent, like, I'm not like, please do not say, don't let anyone say that I said Hieronymus Bosch was perfect racial politics. But, you know, certainly, he posits these people as people who can be attractive and certainly like on par. But of course, they're also, you know, the Garden of Earthly Delights exists as, in theory, an admonishment, like, don't you do it.

• 49:27Kate Lister?

  He does also paint like frogs eating people's bottoms.

• 49:30Speaker 08

  Yeah, exactly. It's like, you know, you paint the big, you paint the big garden orgy to be like, and you shouldn't like this.

• 49:37Kate Lister?

  Don't threaten me with a good.

• 49:38Speaker 08

  Which is how you get away with it, right? You gotta, you gotta be like, oh, no, it's very bad.

• 49:45Kate Lister?

  Stop looking at it. This is an awful scene.

• 49:46Speaker 08

  Oh, wow. I can't believe, wow, gotcha. How about you think this is sexy, you pervert?

• 49:57Kate Lister?

  Thanks for listening and thank you so much to Eleanor for joining us. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like, review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. Coming up, we've got episodes on the contraceptive pill and the third in this mini series, What Made You an Ugo in Tudor Times? This podcast was edited by Tim Arstle and produced by Stuart Beckworth. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again betwixt the sheets, The History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.

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