From squiggle brows to vampire facials, beauty trends seem to get wackier by the minute. But as the Golden Globe-winning show The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel [1] illustrates, beauty routines from decades past [2] were equally as outlandish in their own ways. Set in 1958, the show tells the story of a Jewish housewife (played by Rachel Brosnahan [3]) who decides to become a stand-up comedian after her husband leaves her. In each episode, we get an intimate look at what it means to be a woman in the patriarchal culture of the '50s [4], where her value was determined by her beauty and ability to please a man. The female characters go to great lengths to enhance their looks, and some of the revelations are downright shocking. Ahead, we've rounded up the five craziest beauty trends we spotted on the show and uncovered just how true to history they actually are.
Midnight Makeup Ritual
While your bedtime look may not be so hot, you've probably accepted that your significant other will still love you makeup-free, blemish cream, and all. But if you were a wife in the 1950s, you had to live up to some pretty stringent standards. In a scene at the beginning of the show, we see Midge (aka Mrs. Maisel) get into bed with perfectly coiffed hair and a full face of makeup. Once she's sure her husband is asleep, she sneaks off to the bathroom to put her hair in curlers, remove her makeup, and apply face cream. Hours later, she strategically wakes up to wash the cream off her face, reapply her makeup, and ensure her hair is perfectly in place all before her husband's alarm rings. We later see Midge's mother perform the same exact routine, while also taping the edges of her eyes to prevent them from sagging overnight. Talk about a high-maintenance (and seemingly ridiculous) ritual!
These scenarios aren't too far-fetched, though. According to a 1952 article [5] from The Sydney Morning Herald titled "Beauty For Young Marrieds: Here Is Your Routine For Good Grooming!," women were advised to pin their curls and cover them with a net to be "pretty to-night and pretty to-morrow." Women were also expected to apply "complexion milk" aka cold cream at bedtime to wake up with supple, wrinkle-free skin. Given that housewives were always expected to be "fresh-looking" [6] around their husbands, it doesn't seem unlikely that most women were never seen without makeup on, either.
Bleaching the Bush
In the pilot episode, Midge and her two friends bleach their pubic hair in lieu of waxing or shaving. Sounds pretty painful, right?
Pubic hair trends have drastically changed throughout time. In the US, the first women's body hair razor [7] was released by Gilette in 1915, and with the invention of the bikini in 1946 [8], the precedent for down-there grooming was set. While shaving the bikini line became the preferred maintenance method in the '50s, bleaching was not entirely uncommon. In fact, Marilyn Monroe [9] was fond of dyeing her nether regions a perfect platinum blonde to match the hair on her head!
Kooky Calisthenics
Ever wonder how women in the '50s maintained such slim waists? According to The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, exercise played a huge role in helping women stay fit, but not exactly in the form you'd see today. Midge and her best friend take a calisthenics class, where they repeatedly perform a series of arm shakes, water bottle leg lifts, and "crab walks" (which involved facing upward while walking back and forth on your hands and feet).
As odd as these onscreen exercises may seem, they are indicative of a typical workout routine in the '50s. Housewives were first known to shed the pounds through their daily chores, but the latter half of the decade saw an emphasis on Pilates classes for women to stay trim. This was likely linked to the advent of Jack LaLanne's [10] popular 15-minute television workout program, which first aired in 1953 and became nationally syndicated by 1959. While many of the exercises appear to be a bit silly (including some very slow high knees), they were actually proven to make you work up a sweat!
Girdles and Corsets, Oh My!
As a daring comedian of her time, Midge considers no topic off-limits for her sets — including women's undergarments. In her tipsy onstage rant, she jokes that the tight girdles and corsets [11] she wears prevent her from thinking clearly in the midst of her husband's betrayal.
While it's hard to imagine squeezing yourself into an oxygen-depriving girdle every morning, this act was commonplace for most women of Midge's era. The hourglass waistline was idolised by females of the '50s, and those formfitting cages were just the way to achieve the look.
Goat's Milk and Avocado Facial
When it comes to the wacky beauty methods women have tried in order to look younger, we've pretty much heard it all — that is until we watched The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. In the pilot episode, Midge's best friend, Imogene, explains how another pal recently got a goat milk and avocado facial. Imogene goes on to detail the full treatment, including having a hot towel thrown over your face and straws put in your nose so you can breathe, being shipped out on a boat for four hours, and then returning to shore to be slapped in the face by banana peels — all for a whopping $75! "She thinks she looks 20, but I think she looks the same," Imogene comments on her friend's results.
Although we couldn't pin down whether or not this exact treatment existed in the '50s, it's probably not far off from reality. Around this time, women tried everything from seaweed baths to dripping candle wax on their skin [12] in the hopes of turning back the clock.