Pod Insights Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society What Made You Ugly In Tudor Times? About this episode Why did royalty have worse teeth than commoners? How would the Tudor court have smelt? And when even the Queen of England can be accused of being a witch for a random mole, what hope did the rest of us have?
In this new mini-series, we'll be exploring the beauty standards - and ideas of ugliness - throughout time periods in history.
In this third episode Kate is joined by historian and author Nicola Tallis, to find out how both royalty and commoners achieved the desired looks of Tudor times.
This episode was edited by Tim Arstall. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.
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Transcript 8,733 words · 12 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Kate Lister? Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.
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1:48 Kate Lister? Hello, my lovely betwixters! It's me, Cade Lester, and you are listening to... drumroll, please!
1:56 Kate Lister? Betwixt the Sheets! And I'm so glad that you are, because if you weren't listening, then it's just me talking into a microphone, and that frankly, is just a little bit sad. But before we can keep going, and before I can let you listen to any more, I have to tell you, this is an adult podcast. 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. And if you can't take all of that lot off, well then be off with you. We don't want you hanging around here lowering the tone. Or rather raising the tone, but either way be off with you. Right, on with the show.
2:31 Kate Lister? I'll be honest with you, I don't often get to sit at the highest tables in the land. But when I do, it's nice to indulge, isn't it? Here in the Tudor court, it's no different. When they're dishing out portions of eel and porpoise, it would be rude to refuse. Wise, but rude. And anyway, big Henry's watching on, so we better all behave and toe the line. And we've got to look our best. We've got to pick our teeth clean. In order to get chunks of porpoise out from between our teeth, we've been given golden toothpicks. A little bit extra perhaps, but I'm here for it. Although as it turns out, they are extremely damaging for delicate Tudor teeth.
3:14 Kate Lister? Which are already crumbling from this new fancy import of sugar. It's not a great look and frankly, it's the tip of the iceberg as far as beauty standards in this period go. I've heard that Catherine Parr is filling a bathtub with milk down the hall. Do you want to go and have a look? Me too. Right, on with the show.
3:32 Speaker 04 What do you look for in a man?
3:34 Speaker 05 Oh, money of course.
3:35 Speaker 04 You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you.
3:38 Speaker 05 I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing it.
3:50 Speaker 06 Yes, social courtesy does make a difference.
3:53 Speaker 07 Goodness, I feel for them. Goodness has nothing to do with it, dearie.
4:01 Kate Lister? Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Shades, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Caitle Stur. Whether they're suffering from smallpox scars or slapping lead-based paint all over their face, Tudor beauty standards were, well, they weren't the best. How did the Tudor queens adhere to the beauty standards of the day? Why did you risk being accused of being a witch if you fell short of them? And why did it pay to be working class in the pursuit of beauty? Well, joining me today is friend of the show and Tudor expert Nicola Tallis, and she is going to help us find out. Codpieces and lead-based foundation at the ready, everybody. Let's do it.
4:44 Kate Lister? Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Nicola Tallis. How are you doing?
4:50 Speaker 08 Oh, it's so nice to be back, Kate. I'm doing great.
4:53 Kate Lister? We had so much fun on our little mini-series of The Six Wires of Henry VIII, and people were very, very much in love with you, it has to be said.
5:02 Speaker 08 Oh, that's nice.
5:03 Kate Lister? We got all kinds of nice feedback. I know, I know. So, of course, we had to get you back for this one, for beauty standards in the Tudor period.
5:13 Speaker 08 Yeah, it's so nice. Did I tell you that I used to be a beauty therapist?
5:16 Kate Lister? No, what kind of beauty therapist?
5:19 Speaker 08 Well, not a very good one, actually.
5:21 Kate Lister? I don't believe that.
5:24 Speaker 08 Yeah, I didn't do it for very long, but yeah, I used to do nails and waxing and massage and all sorts, the whole works.
5:34 Kate Lister? Hmm. Well, then you are the most perfect person. So, this is part of a sort of a mini-series that we're doing on how to be beautiful in various time periods, because it changes, but then it doesn't change at the same time, you know, but like each period has got things that make it very, very unique to them. Let's start with a real basic question before we even get on to how people looked. What do you define as the Tudor period? What sort of dates are we looking at for this?
6:05 Speaker 08 Yeah, so the Tudor period really dates from 1485, when Henry VII won the Battle of Bosworth, and ends in 1603, when his granddaughter Elizabeth I dies. So, it's a period of just over 100 years.
6:22 Kate Lister? Is it called the Tudor period in anywhere else apart from the UK? What was it called? They can't, in Italy, they can't have been calling it the Tudor period. What would they have called it?
6:32 Speaker 08 Um. Well, that's a good question, really. Um. I guess they would have kind of referred to it in more general terms, in terms of who was actually on the throne at the time. So during the reign of Henry the Seventh, it would have been termed the Henry Tidder period, because that's what everybody, all of Henry's enemies, kind of tried to disparage him by picking on his name a bit. But by Henry the Eighth, people are a bit more respectful. People are thinking of him very much as kind of a Renaissance prince. And, yeah, Renaissance, so they're very much part of the Renaissance period. And then, yeah, by Elizabeth,
7:14 Speaker 08 you've got a good old Gloriana on the throne. So people are kind of, yeah, thinking of it as that kind of golden age of queenship in some ways.
7:23 Kate Lister? I think we could sort of broadly call it the Renaissance as well. Like, that that encompasses more than the UK, doesn't it?
7:30 Speaker 08 Yeah, definitely, definitely. Yeah, so we are part of that, yeah.
7:34 Kate Lister? And despite the fact that there is sort of a popular myth out there that people in the past smelt terrible, looked terrible, were covered in warts and were just generally vile. Beauty and looking good and being attractive was very important to these people, was it not?
7:52 Speaker 08 Yeah, no, it really was. And actually, this whole kind of idea that they didn't wash and they had poor hygiene. I mean, a lot of it is kind of true in some respects, but it's, there is more to it. It's just, it's not just that they couldn't be bothered to wash. It was thought that having kind of layers of grime and dirt on you to a certain extent offered you a bit of protection from illness and that you were leaving yourself more vulnerable to becoming unwell if you were to wash too regularly. And, you know, we do see particularly Henry the Eighth, he's really, really keen on hygiene. And, you know, we see people washing their hands a lot. They get given these finger bowls to wash before and after meals.
8:36 Speaker 08 And at Hampton Court, for example, Henry the Eighth has a bathroom installed with a bath that has hot and cold running water. So, yeah, it's not that people just can't be bothered to wash. It is a bit of a myth and it is very much going on. Like, people believed that illness was also passed through the air with bad smells. So.
8:58 Speaker 08 There's no way that you want it to kind of smell too bad.
9:02 Kate Lister? No, no. And also people were, they were making do with what they had, I guess, like, you know, they were doing their best. But if you're in somewhere like London, which is not the sprawling metropolis that it is today, but it's still a big place. Like getting fresh water, access to that, and being able to heat it up, that's something rich people do. But even the poorest people, they would have tried, they would, there'd have been like wet rags and things that they would have washed themselves with.
9:30 Speaker 08 Yeah, definitely. And you see women in particular who are basically sponge washing themselves every day. So yeah, they're not having, they're not having a bath daily, they're not, definitely not having a shower daily. But yeah, they are doing their best, like you say, with what they've got available to them. And of course, the richer you were, that meant that the more access you had to these kinds of products, these kinds of facilities to make yourself look and smell good. But definitely, this is something that the lower classes are doing their best to try and imitate as well.
10:07 Kate Lister? Hmm. Smell is a really interesting thing to study, I find, because I, I'm such a perfume girlie. And I, I love the idea, like trying to study, because you've no idea what things smell like. It's like the one thing that leaves no trace whatsoever. But if we were going to go back to the Tudor period, like, what do you think that the court would have smelled like?
10:28 Speaker 08 I've got to say, I don't think it would have been that great, actually, because.
10:32 Kate Lister? It wouldn't have been great.
10:33 Speaker 08 No, I mean, if you think about it, in the court, you would have had rushes on the floor to try and mask some of the dirt that was being brought into court. But there were hundreds of people standing on these rushes, there were people urinating on these rushes. There were, you know, cats, dogs, animals. So I always kind of think of that, you know, you ever smell that smell of like fresh rushes? If you go into like a stately home and they're on the floor and I always think, oh, that's nice.
11:05 Kate Lister? Yeah.
11:05 Speaker 08 So I think maybe that coupled with maybe a bit of stale wee, a bit of B O, that's probably what I imagine a court smelling like.
11:14 Kate Lister? And I also think as well that, that there would have been like little pockets where it would have been very, very heavily perfumed. Because people were aware of bad smells and they didn't want to smell bad, so they would themselves be kind of. Drenched in perfume, but then again, at the same time, their clothes are still quite dirty by our standards and like the environment. So it must have been this really weird mix of like awful smells and then really intense. Like smells when they're trying to like, like to, to not stink.
11:44 Speaker 08 Yeah, exactly. Like you say, people are drenching themselves in perfume and they're also carrying around, if you're rich anyway, they're carrying around these jewelled pomanders, which are basically like containers. That they'd put herbs in, anything sweet smelling that they'd use to kind of waft away bad smells. Cause it was, yeah, it was believed disease was carried through the air. That was a way of protecting yourself as well. But also, yeah, you mentioned the clothes and those clothes, particularly for the rich, they weren't things that you could just chuck in the washing machine at the end of the day. You couldn't wash them. There was no way of washing them. Like you'd have a linen, uh, some kind of linen shift or shirt for a man that would be used to soak up all of the sweat.
12:29 Speaker 08 And then your clothes would be put on top of that. Um, it's not really very pleasant particularly, but the linen shift would be the only thing that you'd be able to wash really.
12:39 Kate Lister? But if you could smell good somehow, that would have been quite important to these people, wouldn't it? To be for us, as a place to start for like Tudor beauty. Not smelling like an open sewer. That's, that's like page one.
12:52 Speaker 08 Yeah, definitely. We know Henry VIII in particular was really offended by bad smells. And in fact, that was one of the things that apparently. Put him off the van of Cleves was the fact that she apparently smelled terrible. Yeah. So. That was one thing that you had to make sure, particularly if you're coming into the presence of the king or queen. Smelling good was definitely something that should be really, really high on your agenda because if you didn't, that was something that they were definitely going to take notice of.
13:24 Kate Lister? You mentioned that already that there's a couple of disparities between rich and poor. And I think that that's still very much the case with beauty standards to this very day. I think that. We've got constants, things that are constantly found attractive, being healthy, being like your skin being clear, all that stuff. But so much of it is actually displays of wealth. That that you can afford these things, you can afford to look nice. Are they in that case, is that you can afford to smell good?
13:52 Speaker 08 Yeah, yeah, no, you're absolutely right. It is something that we still experience, that we still see today. So some things never change. Actually, back in Tudor times, in some respects, being poor kind of did you a favour, particularly when it came to, yeah, I know, you wouldn't have thought this, but particularly when it came to oral hygiene, because the rich, of course, people weren't using toothbrushes at this time. So the rich were buying gold and silver toothpicks, which was actually damaging the enamel on their teeth. Whereas poorer people couldn't afford those sorts of things. They were using wooden toothpicks,
14:37 Speaker 08 which did less damage. So an unintended benefit, I suppose.
14:42 Kate Lister? And I guess they couldn't afford sugar.
14:44 Speaker 08 Yeah, exactly. They couldn't afford sugar either. Elizabeth the First, notorious for rotting her teeth because she ate too many sugary confections. And then to make it worse, not only was she, you know, using these gold and silver toothpicks, but she was also using a kind of mouthwash that was made of honey. So.
15:05 Kate Lister? Oh, for fuck's sake.
15:07 Speaker 08 Yeah, exactly. And then later, one that was made of sugar. So she got it completely wrong. So, yeah, the poor didn't know how lucky they were in that respect.
15:19 Kate Lister? What about something like skin tone? Because you read about that all the time in these accounts. When somebody is describing someone's appearance, if they want to say that they're good looking, skin is a really, teeth is a really big one as well. When you can sort of get, see how often people's teeth must have been missing by how much they focus on the fact that, oh, they've got really nice teeth. But skin as well, fair skin, white skin, clear skin, that's really important to them.
15:47 Speaker 08 Yeah, yeah, it's massively important to them. Uh, white skin, the paler, the better. This is actually one of the reasons that Anne Boleyn's enemies are later able to criticize her because they say that she doesn't really conform to the typical standards of beauty because she hasn't got this really pale skin. She's got a sort of olive, swarthy complexion. So, yeah, uh, basically, if you did not have that pale skin, particularly as the Tudor period progressed and we go into the reign of Elizabeth the first, then you would fake it, fake it till you make it, and do everything that you could to obtain that pale skin.
16:32 Speaker 08 Uh, so that was something that was very fashionable throughout the entirety of the Tudor period.
16:37 Kate Lister? And how would they do this? How, if I came to you as a Tudor, uh, beauty esthetician and said, I need to be paler. This is, this is awful. I'm not nearly deathly white enough. How would we achieve this?
16:49 Speaker 08 Well, um, if you had freckles, for example, we might start by putting a bit of lemon juice on your face just to get rid of those. And then we'd think about what we could do to, yeah, to apply some makeup, make your skin fairer. So we'd start by putting on Mondia equivalent of, I guess, a primer, which would be like a, an egg white base. So we'd mix up some egg whites, pop that on.
17:15 Kate Lister? Okay.
17:15 Speaker 08 And, yeah, I mean, doesn't sound too bad so far, but the, the worst bit is to come because then we would apply the special makeup that was made from a mixture of vinegar and lead. So this is dangerous stuff, which does have the effect, at least to begin with, of making you appear very fair, very white. But of course, it has hugely terrible health effects. And actually, even in the Tudor period, some people were noting that it could make women's and men's actually, but it could make their faces appear grey and really wrinkly. So.
18:03 Speaker 08 In the attempt to kind of make your skin fair in a way to, you know, to seek beauty, you're actually causing more long-term damage that wouldn't have made you look particularly good.
18:19 Kate Lister? It must have killed so many people as well. If you want to handle lead today, you need like suits and masks and all kinds of safety protocols and they're just smearing it on their face on a daily basis.
18:34 Speaker 08 Yeah, exactly. And actually, lots of people were leaving it on there for weeks at a time. So it wouldn't be removed straight away. And even when it was removed, they were using pastes that were made of things like mercury and crushed up eggshells, which were going to be causing more damage to the skin. So it was a really toxic combination all round.
19:01 Kate Lister? And it's just kind of sad to think of them just like in this vicious cycle then, isn't it? Of like the lead, even if it didn't kill them, it will damage your skin. It will, and it will age you prematurely quite rapidly. And then they're putting more on top of it to try and mask that. And then, dear, oh dear.
19:19 Speaker 08 Yeah, it's horrendous. And like you say, it does lead to deaths. People, people do die because they're being poisoned by the lead that they're putting on to their skin. And yeah, it's not just women that are doing this. Men are doing this as well.
19:33 Kate Lister? What about lips? You get lots of discussion around like rosy red lips, lips like roses and all this stuff. But then sometimes at different points in history, they become very anti-makeup and you're, which we know they're not really not wearing makeup, but it's the no makeup makeup, which is actually ironically quite difficult to do. But what about like lips and then kind of a wider question around cosmetics? What was the Tudor attitude to cosmetics?
20:03 Speaker 08 Yeah, so uh earlier in the Tudor period, you don't really tend to see women wearing too much makeup. You might see them wearing a little bit of rouge on their lips, which was made of things like, uh, well, the dye came from crushed up insects.
20:22 Kate Lister? Nice.
20:23 Speaker 08 And that was again, that was another sign of wealth, because those insects often came from places like Mexico, um, and that would be mixed with beeswax. But you see later on, definitely during the Elizabethan period, that's when the rouge lips, the rouge cheeks really become big. And, you know, we see Elizabeth, who was the real trendsetter, of course, and everyone wants to follow her example. So Elizabeth is wearing, um, you know, these red lips. All the ladies at the court want to emulate the queen, so they're doing exactly the same. And there were kind of manuals about cosmetics and their use that were widely read and were quite popular during the Tudor period that contained recipes
21:07 Speaker 08 for making lipstick, um, for making these face powders and these face creams and things. But generally speaking, that's something that becomes more and more popular as the Tudor period progresses. So earlier, um, during the reign of Henry VIII, it's kind of less is more. Perfumes are there, um, you see women, yeah, plucking their eyebrows. There are other kinds of things going on, but cosmetics and the use of creams and makeup is something that really becomes popular under Elizabeth largely.
21:45 Kate Lister? You see Elizabeth with those really arched eyebrows as well in in the portraits of her. I wonder if she was plucking or drawing those on.
21:53 Speaker 08 That's a good, yeah, I mean, that's, I, who knows?
21:56 Kate Lister? I don't know.
21:56 Speaker 08 A bit of both, maybe. Um, we see, I mean, yeah, we know women were doing a lot of plucking during this period. They weren't just plucking their eyebrows, actually, either. They were plucking their hairlines as well.
22:09 Kate Lister? God, yeah, the tall forehead that they all.
22:12 Speaker 08 Yeah.
22:12 Kate Lister? But for that, for some reason, they found insanely attractive, a really high forehead.
22:17 Speaker 08 I mean, I don't think I'd have the patience actually to sit there and pluck hairs, individual hairs out of my hairline, to be perfectly honest, but. I mean, what else did they have to do? Well, you do see a a lot of that going on. And if you couldn't be bothered to do that, or if that didn't work, then you'd use a wig instead. Um, so yeah, there's, yeah, wigs, lots of those going on as well, particularly when Elizabeth ends up losing all of her hair. Um, so.
22:45 Kate Lister? Why does Lizzie end up losing her hair? Cause she's sticking lead all over her face, that's why.
22:50 Speaker 08 Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you know, this kind of fashion and trend for having fair skin, it also extends to hair. The um, fashion is to have fair and pale hair. And I'm not saying that this is something that Elizabeth necessarily did, but certainly people in the Tudor period were doing this. If you didn't have fair hair. You could try and lighten it by applying um, lotions that were made of things like saffron as well. To turn your hair yellow and orange. So there's that sort of thing going on. But yeah, Elizabeth, it's no wonder really. She was applying. All sorts to her face. It's no wonder that her hair.
23:29 Speaker 08 Ended up being lost and we see her wearing these increasingly elaborate wigs that her ladies are given charge of styling for her.
23:39 Kate Lister? I wonder if Henry wore wigs. When did wigs start to be? I don't seek recalling any pictures of him. Wearing a wig.
23:46 Speaker 08 No, no, not as far as I am aware. No, we know, you know, Mary Queen of Scots was wearing them as well. So they're definitely a thing. By the mid Tudor period. Yeah, yeah.
23:58 Kate Lister? James the first, I know he's not a Tudor, but was he, was he wearing a wig?
24:03 Speaker 08 Yeah, that's a really good question. Yeah, I don't know. I feel like it was Charles the second.
24:08 Kate Lister? Yes.
24:08 Speaker 08 Yes.
24:09 Kate Lister? Yes. Big wig with him. Henry was red, red hair must have been quite big with the Tudors then. If if everyone's trying to pretend that they're royalty and like imitating every them. And to the extent of giving themselves skin cancer to do it, was red hair like quite trendy?
24:26 Speaker 08 Yeah, definitely, definitely under Elizabeth because the Queen is a redhead. Like I say, um, everybody wants to look like the Queen. And what better way to flatter somebody than to try and emulate them in every aspects of what they were? How they appear, including their hair. So yeah, red hair becomes very popular as well.
24:49 Kate Lister? It's just occurred to me that all of this discussion around, you know, the hair's got to be blonde or red. And the skin's got to be like deathly, deathly pale. And we know now that that the Tudor period was far more multicultural than than we think it it would have been. Or how on earth would somebody who wasn't white fit into this standard? I guess they just wouldn't.
25:11 Speaker 08 Yeah, I think that they would just, like you say, there were lots of different people in England at this time and also working at court. And I presumably they didn't even attempt to try and conform to these standards of beauty or to fit in in any way. We don't know, but yeah, certainly Henry VIII has, for example, a black musician. Uh, John Blank. There's also, there's another young man that we know about, Jack Francis, who was a really experienced and talented diver. Who was employed to salvage bits from the wreckage of the Mary Rose. There's probably black servants that come to England in the train of Catherine of Aragon as well.
25:55 Speaker 08 So presumably they did just, they were just accepted for who and what they were. We don't really have a lot of information about it sadly.
26:04 Kate Lister? No, no, it's kind of lost to us, isn't it? But we know that they were there. I mean, I'm I'm guessing humans being as horrible as we are, I guess that that perhaps their quote unquote exoticism might have been eroticised.
26:16 Speaker 08 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is an age, I suppose it's some things never change in some respects. But this is an age when if you looked the wrong way or you stood out for being different. That could be seized upon for positive or negative reasons. So the Tudor period is no different in that respect.
26:35 Kate Lister? I read an argument somewhere that that Shakespearean sonnet about my mistress's eyes are nothing like the sun, that one, that that was possibly written to, to a woman of colour, which I thought was very interesting because it talks about darksworthy complexions and sort of thick hair and dark coarse hair and things like that. And I thought that was quite interesting. And even if, even if Shakespeare didn't write it about a woman of colour, like, look at that, it's very colour-coded, isn't it?
27:06 Speaker 08 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's, that's a really interesting one. Actually, I, I didn't know about that. But yeah, I mean, because again, this is a time when even your eye colour, something that you've got no control over, that's part of a beauty standard as well, like blue and green eyes, those are the ones that you want to have. And if you haven't, well, what can you do about it?
27:32 Kate Lister? Not much.
27:32 Speaker 08 I mean, these days, you can get all sorts of contact lenses and things to change your eye colour. You can change everything, but there wasn't that option back then. So, yeah, there were very, very specific standards, very, very specific ideals about what beautiful was and what it looked like.
27:50 Kate Lister? And what about weight and body shape and body type? Because this is an interesting one, because this changes all the time. And I think that weight and body shape is very intimately linked with wealth and with money and what you can afford. Like, today, the beauty standard is like, it's still very thin, even if you, like, for a while, we all wanted a massive house like the Kardashians, but even that's quite unobtainable, isn't it? But like, it's, it's thin, it's taut, it's normally bronzed, all of which is showing that you've got leisure time to go and work out and look after yourself and go and go and get a tan on holiday and blah, blah, blah. And it's all about not being poor, basically, so much of it when you actually look at it. And you can see that all throughout history.
28:33 Kate Lister? So what would the Tudors have thought about our current body beautiful, where you are very, very low in body fat and very high in muscle mass?
28:44 Speaker 08 Yeah, well, I mean, there's kind of a mix of things going on here. To begin with, again, sort of earlier in the period, curves were fashionable. Catherine of Aragon was, well, I mean, particularly as she got older and she experienced pregnancies and so on, she became curvier. That wouldn't necessarily have been frowned upon. That was something that was, you know, that was something that was accepted. That was something that was thought to be beautiful. But then you see later on in the period, Elizabeth the first is particularly slender.
29:18 Kate Lister? Really tiny, isn't she?
29:20 Speaker 08 Yeah, yeah, really, really small. I'm very, very proud of her slender hands in particular. So it is a trend that kind of changes. But again, we see, you know, Anne Boleyn, she has a similar figure to her daughter. She's very slim as well. A couple of Henry dits, other wives also thought to be smaller. Catherine Howard was thought to be perhaps a little bit plumper.
29:43 Kate Lister? Oh, was she? I didn't know that.
29:45 Speaker 08 Yeah, yeah, apparently so. But, um, but again, that wasn't necessarily frowned upon at all. And the other thing that wasn't frowned upon was having a, a low cut gown. That was something that women were quite keen to do as well. So we see a lot of that and we see that in portraits, you know, if you, if you have a look at them, sometimes you can just get a little bit of a glimpse of a bit of cleavage. So that's something that's going on in this period as well. Like, if you've got it, flaunt it.
30:15 Kate Lister? So so far, if you're a woman, a Tudor woman, you need to possibly be a little bit plumper, they seem to like that. Deathly pale with quite a tall forehead. Makeup, depending on which side of this era you are in, you need to smell good, light hair, red hair, probably wearing a wig and pluck your eyebrows as well.
30:37 Speaker 08 There we go.
30:39 Kate Lister? I'll be back with Nicola after this short break.
30:45 Kate Lister? Autumn is underway at last, which means the nights are closing in and everything in nature feels like it's just slowing down, except us, of course. For most of us, me included, the world still has a lot of demands on us that can feel like a lot to deal with. There will be a time in all of our lives when we could use therapy, but often when you try to do that, it's still way harder than it should be. Finding a therapist is hard enough, but finding one who actually takes your insurance? That's where most online therapy platforms fall short. Many don't work with insurance at all, which means you're stuck paying the full cost out of pocket or paying for an expensive monthly subscription.
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33:56 Kate Lister? What about the men? What were they doing?
33:59 Speaker 08 Yeah, so these beauty standards, I mean, men were wearing cosmetics more so again during Elizabeth's reign. That's something that's going on. And they weren't quite conforming to the same sorts of skincare routines. They weren't putting crush tag shells on their faces quite as much. But they were using the tools available to them to try and make themselves look good. So they were dressing in the very finest of materials, covering themselves with the very finest of jewels. Even, you know, down to their, their head accessories, their hats, making sure they had beautiful hats. We see Henry VIII wearing hats.
34:44 Speaker 08 And then again, in Elizabeth's reign, we see that fashion for the pointed beard. That's something that really comes into play.
34:52 Kate Lister? And the codpiece, Henry VIII loved a cod. What a ridiculous item of clothing that is.
34:59 Speaker 08 Quite funny though, isn't it? When you think about just how ridiculous he looks.
35:04 Kate Lister? I, when I first heard about that, I thought it would be like, you know, like the cup that rugby players wear. Like it's just sort of a little like molded area. But when you actually see one, you're like, well, that's just a full on erection. He's just walking around, you could hang something off that. This is ridiculous.
35:20 Speaker 08 I know, and like the, the bigger, I mean, yeah, it was a status thing, so.
35:26 Speaker 08 You wanted it the bigger the better, really.
35:28 Kate Lister? The bigger the better.
35:29 Speaker 08 And you see it on the armour as well, don't you, on his armour as well, and you think, really?
35:33 Kate Lister? Really, Henry? I'm very interested to know how the king's health changing over the years impacted beauty standards, because if everybody is trying to emulate royalty and, you know, trying to look like the king, that must have been quite difficult as he's getting older and he's getting sicker and sicker and his physical health is failing him, because he wasn't a well man by the end of it.
35:58 Speaker 08 No, no, he wasn't a well man and despite his best efforts, there were, there was nothing that he could do to mask some of the smells that were coming from him, particularly around his ulcerated leg, which was terribly infected, smell awful, and left him sometimes wheelchair bound. So there were also special pulleys that were put in place in some of the palaces to heave him between rooms and floors. And yeah, I mean, Henry, what I will say is that we know from Henry's inventory that was recorded after his death, that there are so many items
36:41 Speaker 08 of jewellery in there, so many items of magnificent clothing, that I think that he really did do his best to try and ensure that he was still seen as this magnificent monarch when he was in public. But I think a lot of the glamour by the end of his reign came down to Catherine Parr.
37:03 Kate Lister? Oh, that's interesting.
37:04 Speaker 08 Yeah, like, I think she was the one who was really responsible for making sure that the court remained fashionable, that she was very much seen as splendid and beautiful. And, you know, she even does her best to try and what I would interpret as being sexually enticing to Henry, because we know that she has these special little lozenges made for her to try and sweeten her breath that are made from licorice and things.
37:34 Kate Lister? See, there's a tip.
37:35 Speaker 08 Yeah, there you go.
37:38 Speaker 08 So yeah, it's interesting, but I think she's the one who's very much bringing the glamour at the end of Henry's life to his court.
37:46 Kate Lister? Do we have any other records of some of the beauty treatments that his wives were using? Because you're sort of in this really weird situation of like, the king by the end of it is quite frankly, repulsively unattractive. But his wives and mistresses have to try and remain attractive to him because he's not above saying that, oh, she smelt terrible and I don't want her anymore, which is, you know, pretty big words coming from him. But how were they trying to keep themselves attractive for Henry?
38:16 Speaker 08 Yeah, I mean, we don't know, we, we know most about Catherine Parr because of the fact that we've got surviving accounts for her, so we can say more about her. And we know that she was using expensive perfumes, rose water, lavender. We also know that she was taking regular milk baths in an attempt to keep her skin not only pale, but also very, very soft. So.
38:46 Kate Lister? Would that work? Would that be, as a beautician, would you recommend someone bathe in milk?
38:51 Speaker 08 No, I'd imagine you'd come away feeling quite sticky and no.
38:55 Kate Lister? And spinky, wouldn't you? I mean, that would, that would be very nice.
39:00 Speaker 08 She was a fan, she likes that. And I can only imagine that the other wives would have been following, maybe if not identical routines, similar routines. They were definitely all using their clothes as ways to make themselves be seen as magnificent. And they would have been all too aware of the fact that as queens, they were the ones who were the real trendsetters at court and that everyone was following their example. So I'm sure that they would have been acutely conscious of trying to make sure that they looked their best, that they smelled their best at all times.
39:39 Kate Lister? Do you know, you hear a lot about Henry VIII and him and his own ego and he wanted to be attractive and what his wives were doing and why they wanted to be attractive and maybe they were a bit vain. And we definitely hear a lot about Elizabeth being vain and the pale skin and the big wig and all the rest of it. Do you know who we never hear about? Mary.
39:57 Speaker 08 Yeah.
39:58 Kate Lister? Mary, Mary Tudor. Like, what was she? She's got this idea of like, you know, there was the glamour of Henry VIII's court, and then there was this frumpy bit in the middle, and then there was Elizabeth. And he's like, but Mary must have been doing something.
40:11 Speaker 08 Yeah, do you know, it's so true. It's really sad, actually, because she does get, like you say, she does get massively of looks. And I think partly, I mean, we don't know anything about her beauty regime. So it's difficult to say in that respect, but we do know that she was really, really fond of binary. She did love clothes, but then she even got criticised for that as well. There were, you know, people, people can be very cruel, as we know. People commenting on the fact that she was too old and too frumpy and didn't wear these clothes and these jewels well in the same way that Elizabeth did. So.
40:48 Kate Lister? Oh dear.
40:49 Speaker 08 Yeah, she was, it's, it's a real, it's really sad, actually, because, yeah, she did, she did like all of these things as well. And it's just the fact that unfortunately for her, she is in that kind of middle bit, like you said, where there's Henry on one side, larger than life, and then Elizabeth on the other with her wigs. By the time Elizabeth dies, she's got 2,000 dresses in her wardrobe.
41:13 Kate Lister? Wow.
41:14 Speaker 08 Not many people, I know. So not many people can compete with that, probably including Mary.
41:19 Kate Lister? It might be as well to do with the fact that we still do it today, we shouldn't do it, and we should check ourselves and stop doing it. But definitely at this point in history, there is an association between moral beauty and physical beauty. And that if you are a good person, you will look good. And Mary, like, I feel very sorry for her, like, being called a frump and everything, but she did kill a lot of people. She did do that. Like, she's got this reputation as being this sort of historical frump because of that.
41:48 Speaker 08 Yeah, yeah, I think there is, I think there is a lot of that in, in it, you know. And I think it's also the fact that Mary, when she becomes queen, she, she decides on a husband quite quickly, she marries quite quickly. And then she's kind of wifed off and all of her, you know, all of her wifely duties, duties are centred on Philip. Whereas Elizabeth kind of plays the field a bit more, so people talk about her more in terms of, you know, her beauty, in terms of her as a potential, like, the woman that everyone wants to marry. She's the queen that everyone wants to grab. There isn't really that with Mary at all. And Elizabeth is younger when she becomes
42:30 Speaker 08 queen. Mary is thirty seven by the time that she becomes queen. I mean, that's considered to be practically an ancient monument. So it's, there are really interesting things there about, yeah, age and marital status as well that I think maybe come into play with that. Mary's just not seen as being as glamorous as Elizabeth.
42:54 Kate Lister? It's not one word you ever hear associated with her.
42:56 Speaker 08 No, you don't, do you? You don't. And Elizabeth is the one that gets all the attention for sure.
43:04 Kate Lister? I'll be back with Nicola after this short break.
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44:26 Kate Lister? We've talked a bit about beauty and what a Tudor hottie would have been. I suppose the flip side of that is then, well, what did they consider unattractive? Like if they, in the records, if somebody is gonna, like, they're really trying to, like, go after somebody and pan what they look like. What do they say? Like, today, fat is normally thrown about. We have a real hang-up around it. And if you wanna, like, you know, impugn someone, you may, "Oh, you fat cow. It's horrible. We shouldn't do it. It's fat shame. It's nasty." But we still do it. What were the Tudors doing? What would have been really ugly for them? You mentioned freckles earlier, for example, and they're quite cute today.
45:04 Speaker 08 Yeah. Yeah, I know. I love a freckle.
45:08 Kate Lister? I love a freckle.
45:09 Speaker 08 But yeah, freckles were very much frowned upon. In fact, any kind of mark, any kind of blemish, any kind of mole.
45:16 Kate Lister? Oh, a mole.
45:17 Speaker 08 And, yes, moles. And, you know, moles later on in the Tudor period, they become associated with witchcraft.
45:24 Kate Lister? Oh, God, yes.
45:25 Speaker 08 So, yeah, people are terrified at the idea of having any kind of mole because it could potentially, you know, if you ever got on the wrong side of somebody and ended up being accused of witchcraft, that could be used as evidence that you were a witch, whether you were male or female. So, nobody wants to have a mole in any way, shape or form.
45:48 Kate Lister? Okay, moles are out.
45:49 Speaker 08 Moles are out. There was also this story that emerged. It's almost certainly not true, but the idea that Anne Boleyn had this sixth finger.
46:01 Kate Lister? Oh, I've heard that. Is that not true?
46:04 Speaker 08 No, not true. Or no evidence that that's true. So, but something that was put about by people that were hostile to her. So, but in either scenario, it shows that we don't want six fingers. That's definitely a big no-no as well. There are those things at play. It is considered important, actually, that you had good teeth, which-
46:24 Kate Lister? They loved that.
46:24 Speaker 08 Admittedly, it's very, very difficult to, particularly if you're rich, it is difficult to ensure that it kind of stays that way or that you do have good teeth. That's something that's, that's not easy. What else is there?
46:40 Kate Lister? I was gonna say aging, that seems to be a fairly constant one throughout history and we still do it today. We're still a very ageist society when people say that you look like good or they say you look good for your age. Or like all the beauty treatments are about not aging and that seems fairly constant throughout
46:57 Speaker 08 Yeah.
46:58 Kate Lister? our history and around the world. I've yet to find a culture where getting older is considered more attractive.
47:05 Speaker 08 Yeah, yeah, that's so true. Actually, that's completely true. And, you know, as I said, by the time Mary the first becomes queen, she's thirty seven. Lots of people are thinking, God, she's old. There's no way she's gonna have children. And they think it's actually the same, you know, Catherine Parr, she gets pregnant with her first child at thirty six. I think, wow, that's really, really old. So yeah, there's, there's obviously that as well. The other thing I forgot to mention, I should have said this when we were talking about complexion, but is scarring. And that was another reason why people wore this makeup is because this is an age that disease is rife, particularly smallpox that Elizabeth the first herself nearly dies from.
47:48 Speaker 08 So any kind of blemish on your face, your body from disease, that's very much frowned upon. That doesn't want to be seen in any way, shape or form.
47:58 Kate Lister? So I often think about people and well, at most points in our history, definitely at this point of like all the things now that we can get quote unquote fixed. I don't mean necessarily like plastic surgery, but something like acne. Like we have good treatments now for acne, but back in the day, that's you just had to have sat there with that. There was no help for you at all.
48:20 Speaker 08 No, absolutely nothing. You might be able to try one of these lotions and potions. And you might be able to try putting a bit of olive oil on it or a bit of chamomile or something. But yeah, there was no guaranteed or perhaps we should say perhaps no real safe way of ensuring that those sorts of treatments worked. You just, you did, you just had to put up with it. You had to live with it and accept it.
48:45 Kate Lister? Mad. So as a final question then, and I didn't know that you were a beautician for a while there. Have you ever found a Tudor beauty tip, treatment, anything that you would actually consider doing to this day? Or are they all just wall to wall insanity?
49:02 Speaker 08 Yeah, unfortunately, and I've looked into this.
49:06 Kate Lister? They're all bonkers.
49:08 Speaker 08 There is nothing, yeah, there is nothing that I would put on my face. I've looked at these recipes before and there's at least, in every chewed a recipe you find, there's at least one dangerous or really, really wacky ingredient that you think, hang on a minute, no way. And so, no, I have to say, in that respect, I'm very glad that we're living in the 21st century. I don't know what they were thinking, but thank God, times have changed.
49:35 Kate Lister? Nicola, you have been beautiful to talk to. Thank you so much. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?
49:43 Speaker 08 Oh, thank you, Kate. It's been so nice to be back chatting to you. And yeah, so people can follow my Instagram account that I am at Historian Nicola, and that's mainly where you'll find me these days.
49:58 Kate Lister? Amazing. Thank you so much for dropping by. You've been a treat, as always.
50:02 Speaker 08 Thank you for having me.
50:08 Kate Lister? Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Nicola for swinging by. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like, review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. If you'd like us to explore a subject, or maybe you just wanted to say hello, perhaps swap some beauty tips, then you can email us at [email protected] . Coming up, we have got an episode on the contraceptive pill and the final episode in this mini-series on historic beauty standards, all about the Victorians who were frankly, mental. This podcast was edited by Tim Arstall and produced by Stuart Beckwith. 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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