Introduction to Victorian beauty

When I first saw the brief for this terms project my initial thought was that I wasn’t really looking forward to the gothic part of the project, but after looking further I am more interested. I don’t really have a lot of knowledge on Victorian beauty ideals but after some research have found that it doesn’t really have anything that stands out in particular. I looked on Pinterest and found that dark eyes were quite popular on some women and also pink cheeks. Most of the looks in portraits show simple styles, the makeup in particular. They all have a romantic feel to them, almost like the sitting is looking at their lover.

When thinking about gothic horror and Victorian beauty I decided to look at the definition of ‘gothic horror’ and then ‘Victorian beauty’ to see how they go together; When looking at the definition of gothic horror I find that it is a genre of literature with both elements of horror and romance. Also when looking at gothic horror images they showed darkness and ‘scary’ stories. For Victorian beauty I found that towards the begging of the Victorian era it was about modesty and natural beauty. Women of higher class practiced limitation with their makeup. Although many still used powder to tone down shine and give the skin a glow, it was used cautiously. Even eye shadows and lipsticks were very pale in tone and carefully applied. Bold colours and heavy makeup application was initially said to be a taboo and was used only by prostitutes. The use of cosmetics actually became controversial with many religions banning them as immoral or labelling them as “the tools of the devil”. I think when combining gothic horror and Victorian beauty they don’t really fit in together but putting the two together you get a romantic and dark outcome.