Deadliest Fashion From History

Deadliest Fashion From History

Aimee Heidelberg - August 7, 2023

Deadliest Fashion From History
Women working at United States Radium Corporation, c. 1922. Public domain.

Radium – For that (Un)natural Glow from the Inside

Radium was a wonder material. Its radioactive metal initially marketed as a health product and used in toothpaste, pillows, tonics, condoms, and cosmetics. People were drinking it in water to restore their health, youth, and vitality. Girls painted their faces with the radium-based UnDark pilfered from the factory where they painted glow-in-the-dark watch dials. The paint made their faces glow as bright as the dial numbers they painted, giving them a good laugh. In Paris, Tho-Radia debut, with radium as its healthy, youth-restoring ingredient. It would reduce fat, restore wrinkled skin, even improve circulation, and give people the healthy glow so coveted among fashionable people in the 1930s. People knew radium meant energy, and that can’t be bad, right? Doctors even knew how to harness radiation to treat cancer, so it had to be good and healthy.

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