Medieval Beauty: Medieval Beauty: Secrets, Standards, and Surprising Trends (Replay)
Tudors Dynasty & Beyond
RedTop Media / Rebecca Larson
4.4 • 794 Ratings
🗓️ 23 November 2025
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
*This was an extremely popular episode from November 2024, with Dr. Lacey Bonar Hull (just before she got her PhD) that I wanted to share with you again.
Ever wondered what beauty looked like in the Medieval era? In this episode, we reveal the unexpected secrets behind achieving that flawless, pale complexion, why some beauty practices were worth risking your life, and which surprising trends made their way into Medieval society. Join us for a journey through pale faces, herbal concoctions, and the surprising lengths people went to for the perfect look—centuries before modern makeup!
--
Want a commercial-free episode? BECOME A PATRON!
--
CREDITS:
Host: Rebecca Larson
Guest: Dr. Lacey Bonar Hull
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The Tudor's Dynasty podcast. |
| 0:03.9 | Hello and welcome back to the show. |
| 0:06.1 | I'm your host, Rebecca Larson, and today I welcome a special guest back to the show. |
| 0:10.8 | It's been a while. |
| 0:12.0 | Lacey Boner Hall, Lacey, welcome back. |
| 0:14.9 | Hi, Rebecca. |
| 0:15.7 | How are you? |
| 0:16.6 | Oh, I'm so good, and I'm so happy to have you here today. |
| 0:20.0 | You just accomplished something pretty |
| 0:22.2 | big, did you not? I did. I just submitted my doctoral dissertation. So I'm excited to be |
| 0:29.2 | chatting about that a little bit today. Yeah, I can't wait. So today's topic is one that I've |
| 0:34.5 | never done on the show. And I think it's when people are really going to be |
| 0:38.0 | interested in. Why don't you tell everybody what we're going to be talking about? So we are going to |
| 0:42.1 | be talking about beauty in the medieval period. And it kind of flows a little bit into the period of |
| 0:47.9 | the tutors too. I like to say that my cutoff is around like the year 1500, 1550-ish for the stuff that I talk about. So we'll be |
| 0:56.8 | going from the 12th century to the 16th century talking about beauty standards and cosmetics |
| 1:02.7 | and all things women's faces. You know, I think when we think of beauty in the Middle Ages or in the |
| 1:09.8 | medieval time, we reference in our |
| 1:13.0 | head certain people, right? So for me, immediately I go to Elizabeth Woodville because she was the |
| 1:18.4 | standard of beauty, wasn't she? She was, yeah. So she was really the quintessential beauty for, |
| 1:24.7 | especially the 15th century. But the stuff that I'm going to be talking about, |
| 1:28.8 | it kind of predates Elizabeth Woodville by a couple centuries. But I think we can use her and that |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in 17 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from RedTop Media / Rebecca Larson, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of RedTop Media / Rebecca Larson and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.