Have you ever read book or seen a TV special on strange beauty customs from around the world? Isn’t it just THE best thing to watch/read? I personally love to learn about what is considered beautiful all over the world; it makes you realize that beauty is so relative.

Take for example the geishas’ now obsolete custom of dyeing their teeth black (Ohaguro). A maiko (geisha in training) would dye her teeth black before becoming a full fledged geisha as it was thought that black teeth emphasized the white in their skin and red in their lips.

In Berenice Geoffroy-Schneiter’s book, Geishas, Geishas dyed their teeth black “in order to magnify the brightness of their snow-like complexions.”

This practice dates beyond even the Heian era and was also practiced by commoners (women) and eventually died out during the Meiji era as a result of reforms made to “modernize” (aka Westernize) Japan.

Isn’t that just interesting? East Asian Studies is one of my majors so I’ve been reading up a lot on Medieval Japan and and this is a favourite topic of mine (never seems like schoolwork).

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