History of Rouge: From Ancient Egypt to Modern Times

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of the history of rouge, tracing its origins from ancient Egypt, where it was used for both cosmetic and spiritual purposes, through its adoption by the Romans and its evolution across different cultures and time periods. The essay discusses the changing motivations behind rouge's use, from enhancing appearance to symbolizing social status and connecting with the divine. It highlights the different ingredients and methods used to create rouge throughout history, including the use of natural materials like ochre and animal fat, and later, potentially harmful substances like cinnabar. The essay concludes by emphasizing the enduring appeal of rouge and its role in shaping beauty standards across the globe, from ancient times to the present day, and the lasting impact of cosmetic usage.

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Introduction
Rouge is a term commonly used to describe any color flush, which includes:
chocolate, pink, red and orange. Nevertheless, others may use the term to refer to the red
color of the drug, it is generally not used to describe lipstick. When the style pattern of
contrasting lipsticks with nail polish has ended and the lip stick color selection has expanded,
the word lip color is no longer used. The selection of shades for blush was usually limited
with a red label.
A huge amount of women and some men use makeup in today’s time. There's just one
cause behind this, everybody likes to look good. The coloring and the tone can have a huge
impact with the subtle and deep touches of the cosmetic item. These will mask skin
abnormalities and strengthen the natural look of certain facial characteristics. The cosmetic
industry costs billions and trillion dollar in USA and throughout other countries. It's routine
for millions of women to spend quality time in front of a mirror every day, whether the ladies
planning for a day at normal work, a big business case or a day with that particular special
person, the use of cosmetic is inseparable. It is all started with the ancient Egyptians, who
were the first people to use rouge (Haney, 2020).
History of Rouge
The basic reason was somehow the same as it was today the well eshtablished ladies
in the ancient Egypt wanted to show themselves at their finest as the contemporary
supermodels do now and saw the deliberate application of face-paint as a way to serve this
purpose. But unlike modern women today, they did not try to persuade the handsome man at
work or the some other person. The people of Egypt did not attempt to impress the nearby
pharaoh or some other important people in the society. They shot a little higher at the sights.
They tried to convince the mighty Gods. The link between beauty and spirituality remained

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until the Romans gained power for centuries. The Roman people took up many of the
cosmetic formulas from the Egyptians, but the main motive was different than the Egyptians.
They used rouge to improve their appearance in front of each other. It has not been connected
to the God factor in this case.
Furthermore, the first cosmetics was developed by the Egyptians. The primary rouge
and lipstick Egyptian women put were made from a mix of or ochre red clay and animal fat
or water added together. At the end of the day, to remove all those products they would used
a form of scrub made of crop and animal oils and colognes. Archaeological evidence suggest
that the Egyptian women felt the rouge was linked to their spiritual value, primarily or at least
to a good extent, to the Gods (Renner et al., 2017). Greek women and men gradually imitated
making the rouge with smashed mulberries, red beet juice or crushed strawberries to uplift
their appearance. The users of rouge considered to be the top people of the social hierarchy,
rouge symbolized the higher social rank since cosmetics were costly. Men and women
produced red rouge with the aid of plum (color lead) and cinnabar in ancient Rome. It was
discovered that the combination caused cancer, aging and death. Furthermore, Women and
men used white powder to spice up their faces in the 16th century of Europe. In addition to
other colors, mostly women would add heavy red colored rouge for their cheeks.
Conclusion
Finally, we can say that from Egyptian people and Roman people, superstars to a
secondary school principal or a woman doing their daily choir of marketing in the
supermarket uses cosmetics, the more things are changing the more basic things remain the
very same (Freeman, 2018). The view of a pretty woman or a girl turns heads even in a
crowd, takes heart and triggers a great deal of attention toward the woman. Furthermore, the

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usage of rouge gives one the most desirable products: appreciation. That's what we all need at
the end of the day.

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References
Freeman, L. (2018). PAINTED FACES A colourful history of cosmetics.
Haney, B. (2020). The History of Beauty. In Aesthetic Procedures: Nurse Practitioner's
Guide to Cosmetic Dermatology (pp. 3-6). Springer, Cham.
Renner, G., Audebert, F., Burfeindt, J., Calvet, B., Caratas-Perifan, M., Leal, M. E., ... &
Paye, M. (2017). Cosmetics Europe guidelines on the management of undesirable
effects and reporting of serious undesirable effects from cosmetics in the European
Union. Cosmetics, 4(1), 1.