Watch How Dramatically Makeup Trends Have Changed throughout History

She begins the video with Egyptian makeup, which was worn daily by women and men.

Next up is Ancient Greece, where the male elite frowned upon women wearing makeup.

 

There was just a hint of color used on the lips and cheeks, which was achieved by using the natural dyes from fruits.

Here’s what the aristocrats looked like in Venice in the 16th century.

The most coveted foundation, Venetian Ceruse, was extremely toxic, and it damaged skin. “The more you used, the more you had to use,” Eldridge explains in the video.

In Great Britain in the 19th century, Queen Victoria proclaimed that makeup was “vulgar and unladylike.”

Women who wanted to stealthily add color to their faces would dampen wrapping paper to release the dyes, then rub the paper on their lips and cheeks.

At the end of the 19th century — the birth of the silent-movie industry — there was a newfound respect for theater actresses, who changed the perception of makeup into something that was fun and a symbol of strength.

This new mindset about makeup gave women an “insatiable appetite for makeup on a previously unseen scale,” Eldridge says in her video.

Come the 20th century, makeup looks started changing from decade to decade.

And finally, Eldridge explains, today in many parts of the world — though certainly not all parts of the world — you can choose without censorship any makeup at all.

You can wear a nude lip, a vibrant pink lip, purple eyeshadow, or no makeup at all.

In conclusion: Go wear whatever you damn well please.