Before the Beauty Counter How Medieval Women Cared for Their Skin

Sometimes I wonder when beauty became so complicated.

When did caring for our skin begin to require twelve bottles lined across a bathroom counter? When did we become convinced that we couldn’t possibly understand what our own skin needed without a label telling us?

Because women were caring for their bodies long before there were beauty counters.

Long before laboratories could isolate an ingredient, patent it, bottle it and sell it back to us, women had water. Oil. Fat. Wax. Flowers. Herbs. Honey. Cloth.

And knowledge.

That last ingredient fascinates me more than anything.

I have always wanted to reach backward and gather that knowledge—to know what the women before us knew, what their mothers taught them, what was passed between women before beauty became an industry.

Not because everything ancient was better.

It wasn’t.

But because somewhere along the way, I think we began confusing more with better.

Before the Bathroom Sink

Close your eyes and imagine her with me.

Not a queen. Not a woman sitting at a jeweled dressing table.

Just an ordinary woman.

Her day is finished. There is no faucet to turn. Water has to be carried. If she wants it warm, someone has to heat it. Perhaps she has a basin and a cloth. Perhaps there is soap available. Perhaps tonight is simply water, cloth and hands.

That picture isn’t terribly far from reality—although medieval life varied enormously depending on century, region, wealth and social position.

Ordinary people did wash.

The popular image of medieval Europeans going through life happily covered in dirt is one of those historical myths that refuses to die. People didn’t have our showers or plumbing, of course, but historical evidence shows the use of washbasins, ewers, tubs and public bathhouses. Soap existed too, including soaps made from animal fat and wood ash.

Bathing required more labor than walking into a modern bathroom and turning a handle.

Cleanliness did not.

And I think there’s something important in that distinction.

What Did She Put on Her Skin?

This is where I have to resist the romantic part of my brain.

I would love to tell you that every medieval woman finished her evening by opening beautiful little pots of rose balm and botanical oil.

She didn’t.

What a woman had access to depended enormously on where she lived and what she could afford. A wealthy household and a poor rural household did not have the same beauty cabinet—if we can even call it that.

But oils, fats, waxes, herbs and botanical preparations absolutely belonged to the broader world of medieval medicine and body care.

One of my favorite pieces of evidence comes from The Trotula, an enormously influential medieval collection concerning women’s medicine associated with Salerno in southern Italy. Its treatments include baths prepared with plants and anointing the body with violet or rose oil.

Think about that for a moment.

Rose oil.

Violet oil.

Anointing the body.

Nearly a thousand years later, we walk into a luxury beauty store and see botanical oils displayed beneath beautiful lighting as though someone has just discovered them.

Women knew.

They didn’t understand skin through our modern language of ceramides, transepidermal water loss and dermatological chemistry. We shouldn’t pretend that they did.

But they knew what they could observe.

They knew that certain fats and oils softened skin. They knew plants could be steeped and infused. They knew wax could transform an oil into something more solid. They knew scent could be captured. They knew that the body could be washed, rubbed, combed, perfumed and anointed.

Knowledge doesn’t become meaningless simply because the person who discovered it couldn’t explain it with our vocabulary.

No, Medieval People Were Not All Filthy

Can we finally put this one to bed?

I never really believed it.

Even when I was young and heard people talk about medieval Europeans as though everyone simply spent centuries refusing to wash, something about it didn’t make sense to me.

Human beings don’t suddenly stop being human because indoor plumbing hasn’t been invented.

People notice when their bodies are dirty.

They notice odor.

They sweat. They wash their hands and faces. They groom their hair. They care how they appear to other people.

Medieval Europeans bathed. Some had tubs. Others washed from basins. Public bathhouses existed for people who didn’t have bathing facilities at home. Soap was being made at home and sold as a trade good in Europe by the medieval period.

Were their hygiene practices identical to ours?

Of course not.

Was medieval Europe one enormous thousand-year mud puddle full of people who never washed themselves?

Also no.

History is almost always more interesting than the caricature.

But “Old” Does Not Automatically Mean “Good”

This matters to me.

I love old knowledge. My entire heart seems to lean toward it.

But I don’t want to romanticize history so much that we stop thinking.

Our ancestors used things that worked beautifully. They also used things we now know were ineffective, irritating, dangerous or downright poisonous.

Natural does not automatically mean safe.

Ancient does not automatically mean wise.

Modern does not automatically mean bad.

The gift we have is that we don’t have to choose between them.

We can reach backward with one hand and forward with the other.

We can recover the plants, oils, waxes, rituals and simplicity that served people for generations while using modern knowledge to understand safety, preservation, sanitation, formulation and the skin itself.

That, to me, is far more interesting than blindly worshipping either the past or the present.

Somewhere, Beauty Became a Shopping List

This is where modern beauty loses me.

Walk down a skincare aisle and look at how much we are told we need.

A cleanser.

Then another cleanser.

A toner.

An essence.

A serum.

Another serum for a different concern.

An eye cream.

A moisturizer.

An overnight mask.

An exfoliant.

And then another product to repair the irritation caused by using too many of the products in the first place.

We have access to extraordinary dermatological science today, and I don’t want to dismiss that. Modern medicine has taught us things our ancestors simply could not have known.

But the beauty industry and the science of skin are not the same thing.

One exists to understand and treat the body.

The other also has something to sell us.

And I think we forget that distinction sometimes.

I don’t believe most women need a shelf overflowing with products before they’re allowed to consider themselves well cared for.

Sometimes skin needs to be left alone.

Sometimes it needs protection.

Sometimes it needs moisture.

Sometimes it needs a physician.

And sometimes it needs far less than we’ve been taught to put on it.

This Is Why I Make Things

When I make something myself, I know what went into it.

I know the oil.

I know the butter.

I know the wax.

I know the herb.

I know why it is there.

There is something almost rebellious now about being able to look at what you put on your body and understand it.

But I don’t think it should be rebellious.

I think it was once ordinary knowledge.

And that is the part I want back.

I want women to become curious again.

I want you to know what an oil actually does before someone puts it in a beautiful bottle and tells you it’s luxurious.

I want you to know your butters.

I want you to know your herbs.

I want you to understand enough about your own skin that an advertisement cannot make you afraid of it.

And eventually, maybe you make these things yourself.

I hope you do.

Maybe one day your shelves are covered in jars of herbs and bottles of oils. Maybe you learn to infuse calendula. Maybe you make your first balm and realize how wonderfully uncomplicated it can be.

But maybe you don’t have the time.

Maybe you don’t have the space, the ingredients or the money required to buy twenty different raw materials just to make one little jar.

That’s all right too.

That’s part of why Wilding Hallow exists.

I will make it.

And while I make it, I will keep telling you what I learn.

Because I don’t want to build an apothecary that depends upon you knowing nothing.

I would rather teach you everything I can.

Beauty Was Never Invented by the Beauty Industry

Women were tending to themselves long before anyone called it skincare.

They washed.

They bathed.

They combed their hair.

They rubbed oils into bodies.

They prepared herbs.

They made soaps.

They scented things.

They experimented.

They passed recipes and knowledge from one pair of hands to another.

And no, their world wasn’t some perfect botanical fairytale.

Neither is ours.

But there is something buried there that I think is worth digging up.

Simplicity.

The understanding that caring for yourself doesn’t have to mean owning more.

That beauty can be a ritual rather than a correction.

That an oil can simply be an oil.

That a flower can still have something to teach us.

And perhaps progress doesn’t always mean leaving everything behind.

Sometimes it means going back for what we forgot.