Amazing how we're reverting, isn't it? The new techniques are just as bad for you as the old ones also.

What's also interesting, is reading some things on child development, you get the impression that children typically have a relatively animist way of thinking until the age 7-9. Then, in a society that imparts reason and logic to its members, they lose this in favor of much more of the analytial/synthetic worldview. However, I wonder how much of this is people who never have to grow up. It's a display of many of the bad aspects of child like thinking, notably narcissism, and adolesent thinking, such as self-mutilation.

Of course, even in my grandmother's generation there were corsetts, which were worn so tight you could tell a person wore them by the effect it had on their skeletal structure.

And the Italians, at one point, used deadly nightshade as eyedrops since the dialated pupils it caused were supposed to make women more beautiful (and also made them nearly blind in bright light for roughly a week.) The name "belladonna" is literally "beautiful lady."

There are two things I think I should mention, at this point.

The first is that I have nothing against people doing things to themselves -- even painful things -- to achieve what I think of as a "normal" or "natural" beauty. (And yes, I'm well aware of the cultural implications that statement allgedly carries.)

For example, I'm not against some plastic surgery (why should people be condemned to have a cleft palate for life, or even a huge nose?), dentistry (straight teeth are a blessing, but can be quite painful to achieve), bras, or clothes with hide or de-emphasize our unattractive aspects.

Nothing wrong with these things in and of themselves, but each can be taken to an unhealthy extreme: there are plastic surgery addicts, for example.

Of course, even in my grandmother's generation there were corsetts, which were worn so tight you could tell a person wore them by the effect it had on their skeletal structure...

True enough, but I don't think a corset falls into what I'm talking about: it might be uncomfortable, but, as best I can tell, it wasn't known to be inherantly dangerous with normal use.

And the Italians, at one point, used deadly nightshade as eyedrops since the dialated pupils it caused were supposed to make women more beautiful...

That's probably unhealthy, but again, other than the side effect you mentioned, they probably didn't think it had any long-term negative consequences. (And I'd also bet this was most popular among the most materialistic circles of Italians -- i.e. the visibly wealthy.)

I'm not at all trying to argue that there have never before been Western tendencies towards beauty which sometimes bordered on unhealthy. Of course: even today, women wear high-heeled shoes which make their legs look good, and make their feet hurt, and men hurt their backs by sitting on overly-large wallets rather than carrying a purse.

But that's not the same thing as undertaking something you know will be very painful in the short term, and know could easily be permanently deforming -- or is intentionally meant to look "unnatural" (piercings, metal discs in the ear, scars, etc.).

And there's also a question of popularity here: there have always been tattoos in the past -- on sailors, criminals and carnival freaks -- not every kid you met at a fast-food restaurant. Corsets were probably no more or less popular (and no more or less painful) than high heels are today.

Just to add a little information to the belladonna thread, I used to take it for a while as a child as a stomach medication. It's relatively harmless if taken in proper dosage, however, since the Italians didn't have sunglasses yet, the glare of the mid-day sun had to suck.

Technically corsetts were dangerous to women. Women who used them were often prone to fainting (hence the victorian invention of the fainting couch) and lifetime use basically squished their internal organs (in some ways like the art of Chinese foot binding). But I agree that it's not necessarily in the same category as surgery. You could have at least theoretically changed your mind later about the corset.

I included the full common name (deadly nightshade) to distingusish Atropa belladonna from bittersweet nightshade (Solanum dulcamara)

While nightshade is one of the more toxic plants around, (a few berries can kill) there do seem to be therapeutic doses ( However, I was more worried about the effect of having chronically dialated pupils in bright sunlight, since that would be pretty brutal on the retinas.

Corsets, as I understand them, weren't simply clothes that a person put on but actually altered a person's skeletal structure. Their effect was long-lasting (though certainly nowhere near as crippling or done so early as foot binding)

That was a good link. A reminder of how disturbing that fashion craze was. There is a book on corsets that I found very enlightening: The Corset: A Cultural History
By MS Valerie Steele . It's an interesting book on the subject but I couldn't find a link to read it online. This woman spent a long time researching and trying to separate the truth from the old wives tales. As I understand it skeletal deformaties and rib damage were attributed to corsets sometimes, but there were also other causes such as malnourishment. The corset was in it's day blamed for a variety of ailments including consumption and cancer. Clearly while causing severe damage to the body in general, it was not a cause for either of these diseases. So you have to watch out for the old wives tale aspect of this. The bone corsets were known to puncture organs if they broke. It is believed that there was damage to organs due to prolonged use, which may have included inflamed liver etc from forcing the abdominal organs into a much smaller space in the body. There have also been some links to miscarriages from the uterus being damaged by corset wear as well as lung function issues. These claims have not been 100% substantiated, but would seem to be true for at least a percentage of women that used corsets. So I would agree that statistically the corset would cause permanent damage, but not in 100% of all cases.