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Beauty Rituals around the World

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Assignment 1

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Text: Beauty Rituals around the World

A ritual is a ceremony, an event that takes place in a particular order on a regular basis. For at least 6,000 years, people in nearly all societies around the world, especially women, have been performing daily rituals with the purpose of making themselves beautiful.

Skin and hair care products (called cosmetics) are not modern inventions, because ancient societies used them, too. In fact, some of the present-day beauty rituals have roots in very old practices.

A Brief History of Cosmetics
Ancient Egyptians first invented skin creams and lip balms made of beeswax, olive oil and rosewater. They also came up with lotions for problems like baldness and greying hair. It is believed that Cleopatra, a famous Egyptian Queen, regularly bathed in milk and honey to maintain her beauty.

In Iran people used a black powder called kohl to darken their eyelids, in a ritual similar to what people do with eyeliners.

Chinese people started using nail polish around 5,000 years ago. Different colors, made of gelatin, beeswax and egg white, were used by different social classes. For example, lower classes were not allowed to paint their nails in bright colors.

Throughout the Middle Ages in Europe, the ideal of beauty among higher classes was pale skin. For this reason, royals stayed indoors most of time, and used additional white powder to make them look paler.

Beauty Rituals from around the World
Thanaka Powder, Myanmar
For more than 2,000 years, women of Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) have been using ground wood or roots of the thanaka tree to make a cosmetic paste which protects their skin from the sun.

Monoi Oil, Tahiti
It is popularly used as a skin and hair softener among French Polynesians. The method of soaking petals, the colored parts of Tiaré flowers in coconut oil is 2,000 years old. Nowadays, monoi oil is used as an after-shower lotion to rehydrate the skin.

Shea Butter, Sub-Saharan Africa
This beauty product, made from fat extracted from the shea tree nut, is widely used in cosmetics. It is nowadays added to widespread cosmetics products such as body lotions and soaps. The butter works as a moisturizer for dry skin and a hair conditioner for brittle hair. What's more, it also is edible and can be used instead of cooking oil.