‘Such gaudy tulips raised from dung’: Cosmetics, Disease and Morality in Jonathan Swift's Dressing‐Room Poetry

Abstract

While enabling women to embody fashionable trends and the idealised beauty of the period, cosmetics also offered a disguise, not only for ugly and ageing faces but for disease also. Taking examples from advertisements, cosmetic commentaries and Jonathan Swift's dressing-room poetry, this article demonstrates that, in the eighteenth century, cosmetics, fashion and disease are intimately linked to beauty and issues of morality by cultural factors.