As To The Natural
Hue Of It, This Is A Matter Of No Consequence, For Powder Makes
Every Head Of Hair Of The Same Colour; And No Woman Appears In
This Country, From The Moment She Rises Till Night, Without Being
Compleatly Whitened.
Powder or meal was first used in Europe by
the Poles, to conceal their scald heads; but the present
Fashion
of using it, as well as the modish method of dressing the hair,
must have been borrowed from the Hottentots, who grease their
wooly heads with mutton suet and then paste it over with the
powder called buchu. In like manner, the hair of our fine ladies
is frizzled into the appearance of negroes wool, and stiffened
with an abominable paste of hog's grease, tallow, and white
powder. The present fashion, therefore, of painting the face, and
adorning the head, adopted by the beau monde in France, is taken
from those two polite nations the Chickesaws of America and the
Hottentots of Africa. On the whole, when I see one of those fine
creatures sailing along, in her taudry robes of silk and gauze,
frilled, and flounced, and furbelowed, with her false locks, her
false jewels, her paint, her patches, and perfumes; I cannot help
looking upon her as the vilest piece of sophistication that art
ever produced.
This hideous masque of painting, though destructive of all
beauty, is, however, favourable to natural homeliness and
deformity. It accustoms the eyes of the other sex, and in time
reconciles them to frightfull objects; it disables them from
perceiving any distinction of features between woman and woman;
and, by reducing all faces to a level, gives every female an
equal chance for an admirer; being in this particular analogous
to the practice of the antient Lacedemonians, who were obliged to
chuse their helpmates in the dark.
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