Toning- A Revival of Venetian Ceruse
“Ah yes, the glamorous return of smearing your face with powdered death, because nothing screams timeless beauty like slowly dissolving your skin barrier while your organs silently weep. In this chic revival, we’ve traded 16th-century rot for 21st-century refinement, same toxic glow, just better packaging! Why settle for highlighter when you can have necrosis? Forget natural radiance, this look is to die for… literally”.
Dear Nyaaba,
I have news for my sisters, nieces, aunts and daughters. And even some brothers!
In an age that prides itself on scientific advancement and empowerment, the revival of 21st-century “Venetian ceruse”, the symbolic ghost of a poisonous past, lurks behind our glossy skincare routines and aesthetic ideals. Today, it has a new name: toning.
Toning, once a simple step meant to balance pH levels after cleansing, has morphed into a multi-billion-dollar ritual marketed as essential for “tight,” “clear,” “glass-like” skin. But look closer: toners today are loaded with exfoliating acids, drying alcohols, and active compounds that promise instant brightness at the cost of long-term skin integrity. This obsession with stripping, refining, and erasing texture is a chilling echo of the white-lead past, where the goal was the same, flawless, luminous, poreless skin, no matter the price.
Venetian ceruse, beloved by 16th- and 17th-century aristocrats, achieved its look by leaching life from the skin with white lead. Women suffered burns, hair loss, organ failure, and eventual death in pursuit of a beauty standard that was literally toxic. Fast-forward to now, and although the materials have changed, the effect is hauntingly familiar. The toners and treatments marketed today corrode skin barriers, provoke sensitivity, and create a vicious cycle of dependence, fragile skin that needs ever more products to “fix” the damage.
Social media platforms and beauty influencers amplify the pressure. Products are promoted not as tools of self-care, but as weapons in the war against texture, pigment, and age. Every “miraculous” toner promising tighter pores and “clear canvas” skin feeds into a dangerous ideology: that real, living skin is a problem to be corrected.
Let’s be clear, this is not about skincare. It is about control. The beauty industry, refined in language but brutal in practice, has simply replaced the lead paste with glycolic acid, benzoyl peroxide, and salicylic overload. It sells the same fantasy of purity and perfection, now under the banner of self-love and self-optimization.
We must demand better. Better transparency from brands, better education around skin health, and above all, better ideals. Healthy skin is not flawless. Real beauty is not a filtered reflection. And toning, in its current form, is not a miracle, it’s just the modern mask of poison, dressed in a pretty bottle.
Until we reject this cycle of destruction disguised as care, Venetian ceruse will keep evolving. Not in name, but in practice. Not in lead, but in lies.
Your worried descendant
The Siriguboy
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