Something I think a lot about is how we choose what historical information we preserve (or bury). Often the biases are very easy to find. A hobby of mine is revivalist skincare and beauty, and the amount of information we in the west are interested in preserving is quite low, unless specifically extended to the specific cultural lineages which led directly to western practices. We know about Cleopatra’s bathing practices, Queen Elizabeth’s leaded white makeup, that one cold cream recipe from second century Greece.
We preserve all the little bits of pottery and cosmetics containers we find, but do comparatively little to explore what went inside them, and (the interesting bit!) why.
A recent example where I researched my way directly into a brick wall was an attempt to learn more about aker fassi, the Moroccan lip product stored spread across in clay pots and applied by wetting with a finger. It is universally a rich red, and can be made from a variety of materials, often poppy petals and pomegranate bark.
Aker fassi is centuries old (at least five of them) and was popularized by Berber women. That’s it! That’s all I know. I wasn’t able to find any scholarly research on the topic. None. It’s not in wikipedia. It wasn’t in other resources I searched. There’s probably some books somewhere or recorded notes about it stored in Berber I’ll never find. But as far as my ability to access information about it, it’s just coming from advertising copy (and one journal article indicating poppies likely had cosmetic purposes).
Cosmetics and skincare products are a very exaggerated example, because in no culture is there a “set” way of using them, and so we do point fingers directly at the examples we’re certain about: Elizabeth did do her beauty routine a particular way. Geisha makeup is well-documented. But how did you use your clay pot lip product? Did you use it on your cheeks or as a stain you wipe off, like people do today after buying some from etsy? Did everyone use it? Was it for special occasions? What did it replace? What was it used alongside? This can be incredibly bright in use, was it actually used that way or thinned to create a sheer wash of color? Did people mix it with or apply it over or under something moisturizing made from oils or animal fats? Was this for young women? Older women? Was it something you wore more for yourself, for confidence, or is it meant to be seen? And how have the answers to ALL of these questions changed over the centuries?
So many unknowns. We document this sort of thing incredibly well now for our own products, thanks to advertising, magazines and various video. We have people who specialize in product formulation, makeup artistry, public filings on materials used. If any portion of today’s internet is accessible in a thousand years, people will have no doubts about the “look” of westerners during the 2020s and the evolutions of the major trends, and will also have access to the reality check that those trends are often simply ignored. Some lucky future researcher will go digging and learn about 1990s skinny brows, and that one year we all wore metallic lip gloss, and those little bonbon nail polishes, and the rise and fall of matte liquid lipstick.
Because when serving as our own historians, we actually care a WHOLE LOT about the everyday, and give far better representation to femme-centered topics, and are constantly sharing summaries, lookbooks and “history of makeup: the last 25 years” sorts of materials, same as we’re filling the internet with recipes and fashion pairings and lifestyle content. It’s frustrating when the people who actually DO our research on earlier cultures don’t have those resources… and don’t have the people passionate about uncovering the answers and who can connect them to modern times. I’m SO tired of reading “and we didn’t know what this was… until we spoke to a modern-day weaver! or hairdresser! or reproduction seamstress! or this one woman who does hair taping and knows this would have to be sewn to distribute the weight!” Maybe it’s time to solicit information more widely about ALL the topics we have big unknowns about: tools of unknown purpose, cultural practices. Instead of dropping things in a museum and pretending the information is lost because there isn’t someone around who cares enough to ask questions.