Original subtitles

[light intriguing music]

- Did you know there was a time when fixing your smile

was like playing with dynamite?

- Your teeth could explode in your mouth.

Of the most unpleasant things that I could think

of happening to a person, that's way up there.

- Or when your daily supplement drained

the life out of you.

[air whooshing]

- There's no such thing as safe arsenic.

That's like saying friendly swarm of murder hornets.

- Or when stylish new pajamas set the world on fire.

- So people would go to bed

and they would just catch up like Roman candles.

As with many of these things, it's two steps forward,

one step back with a body count in the middle of it.

- These are the things we used to do for fun, for money,

or maybe outta boredom that we'll never see again.

Were they dangerous?

Certainly.

Deadly?

Occasionally.

But boy, wasn't it exciting?

[dramatic music fades]

[light intriguing music]

Having a full head of healthy hair

has always been stylish,

and that was never more true than in the 1960s and '70s,

and men who were balding

would do just about anything to cover it up.

- Jim Morrison has long flowing locks.

The Beatles are growing their hair out.

My gosh does even a musical on Broadway called "Hair."

- You did not wanna be the bald guy in the singles bar.

You wanted to have that full head of rich hair,

so if God didn't give you that,

you were gonna do whatever you could

to make it look like you did.

-[Adam] There was nothing subtle about it,

but men felt they needed to have a thick,

luscious mane of hair on their heads.

The idea of having a hairpiece is much more widely accepted.

- [Henry] In the '60s and '70s,

men are buying hair pieces like never before

and some of the most famous heads

in Hollywood are crowned in fake hair.

The problem is, toupees at the time

are often unruly and unreliable.

- Any good toupee was made from real human hair woven

into a flesh colored mesh,

and it was attached using a form of cement,

which had its own problems because

the toupee would get hot.

- It's like you're gluin' this thing to your head

and if you start to sweat, maybe it falls off.

- These things are super expensive

and because they're prone to flyin' off,

you gotta worry about getting laughed at

after spendin' a fortune.

- [Negin] There were running jokes about it

on "The Carol Burnett Show,"

on "Match Game."

This became like a big part of joke culture.

- [Henry] But a breakthrough from World War II

is about to be repurposed for the human head.

- Scientists during the Second World War realize

that plastic can be extruded

and spun out like a fine thread

that can be woven into a rope

for parachute cables and parachute scraps.

So now the technology exists

to take plastic and turn it into gossamer thin strands,

strands very much like the hairs on our head.

- [Martin] Instead of using an adhesive

to make your toupee stay on your head,

they would stitch these clumps

of synthetic hair into your scalp.

-[Hakeem] Synthetic hair transplants

weren't the very first type of hair transplant.

Prior to that there were natural hair transplants

where they would take hair from the back of your head

and replant it in the front of your head.

Incredibly painful process.

So, with the synthetic hair, you're not moving hair,

you're actually adding new stuff to the head.

- [Martin] You can style it, you can put products in it.

You don't have to worry

about it getting blown off in the wind.

You can go swimming with it on your head.

It looks like the better solution than the toupee.

- [Henry] By 1979, there are 30 clinics

in America implanting synthetic hair

into thousands of heads,

but customers are getting a lot more than a new hairline.

- Stitching bundles of plastic hair into human heads.

What could go wrong?

- It's essentially like plugging fishing line

into your head.

- [Martin] The material that is producing it contains

an ingredient list that's a little bit alarming.

-[Adam] People are willingly putting

within a few inches of their brain, petroleum, limestone,

natural gas and ammonia.

Why on earth would you want that sewed

into your head in bundles?

-[Hakeem] The body knows somethin's not right

and the immune system reacts to this synthetic hair.

It can result in inflamed scalps and massive pain.

The body rejects the fibers

and in some cases pushed them right back out.

- [Negin] In order to stop the infection from spreading,

some people have to get part of their scalp removed

and one patient even finds a needle in his head.

- [Jason] So by 1983, 10,000 victims

of synthetic hair implants have been identified.

- [Martin] Because of this,

the FDA bans the synthetic hair implant

as a medical device.

It's the first time

that the FDA ever banned a medical device.

- So we know that some people spared no expense

to have more hair,

but what if you had too much hair?

-[Kavitha] In the 1920s, it's really the first time

in America that women are allowed

to bear their legs and arms.

- [Negin] So they need to just get rid of all of this hair

that we used to traditionally cover up with clothes.

- [Henry] The grooming industry explodes

with new razors, creams, and powders,

targeting body hair as an enemy

that must be rooted out at any cost.

- It's a post Darwin age

and the idea of evolution has really taken hold.

There's this almost subliminal message

that says body hair is kind of a throwback.

It almost makes you seem primitive and unhygienic.

- [Dan] Add to the time, talked about hair in this brutal way,

like you need not be embarrassed by it.

It's disfiguring, it must be banished.

- [Negin] People have really put their brains

to this issue developing new ways to get rid of hair,

and they've come up with some very sadistic solutions.

- [Dan] So, there's hair removal creams.

Those will have things like sulfur in them,

which actually can give you chemical burns.

There are even gloves that are sandpaper gloves

that they used to rub the hair off.

- [Henry] And then in 1924,

German American Dr. Albert C. Geyser

gets a bright idea.

- Dr. Geyser is a successful doctor in New York

and he sees this burgeoning hair removal fashion trend

and sees an opportunity.

He harnesses a technology he's very familiar with, x-rays.

- [Lance] One of the things that Dr. Geyser notices

that wherever you use x-rays,

the hair tends to go away.

- [Adam] To him, hair loss isn't a bug in the system,

it's a feature.

And in 1924, he launches the Tricho system.

-[Dan] It's this metal tube, it's got a hole in it,

and what you do is you line up whatever part

of your body is too hairy.

So, say it's your armpit or your chin or whatever,

you put it up against that hole

and x-rays inside the machine hit you

and eventually your hair just falls out.

- [Henry] By 1925, Geyser leases Tricho

to 75 other businesses

and treats 200,000 formally hairy clients.

- Unlike today where you need a ton

of safety training to work with x-rays,

there is no certification needed.

So, anybody who owns a salon can order one

of these things and then just start booking appointments.

- Wherever unwanted hair pops up, it's going to get zapped.

- [Dan] So, people are getting bombarded

with radiation all over their bodies, their cheeks,

their armpits, their sensitive areas,

and the people zapping 'em have no idea what they're doing.

Salons are treating this like it's a hair dryer.

- But each time you're doing that,

you're getting 12 times the radiation

you would get if you just went in a hospital today

and no one's wearin' a lead vest.

- [Kavitha] People at this time

do not really understand x-ray technology,

so you have people exposing parts of their body

to full x-ray blasts for several minutes at a time.

- And after 15 x-rays, the hair is gone.

- [Dan] The Tricho system isn't this pain-free,

cosmetic wonder system that makes you look better.

It's just a ray gun shooting electromagnetic radiation

at your face.

- So people begin seeing real problems.

- [Lance] In 1930, an article is published

in "The Journal of the American Medical Association."

It talks about a person.

She was a client of the Tricho system

and still two years later, she's got burns on her face

and it shows that there's a risk.

And "The Journal" notes that she's the 20th case of people

who use the system who are showing these symptoms.

- [Kavitha] Dr. Geyser is hit with a series of lawsuits,

and soon he has no choice but to shutter his business.

- [Henry] After the lawsuits ends his business,

Dr. Geyser is hit with something

even more serious and ironic.

- When Dr. Geyser passes away in 1940,

he's got cancer that he developed

from using his own machine.

- These days, unwanted hair is handled with lasers

or electrolysis and x-rays.

They're performed by a trained technician,

not the person who also waxes your legs.

- In the lifelong pursuit of looking good,

one of the hardest phases is adolescence.

Acne, growth spurts, bad haircuts.

It's a gauntlet of embarrassments,

and perhaps the most traumatic rite of passage?

Braces.

Right here When I was 13.

- [Jason] We all know that few humans are born

with perfect straight teeth.

For generations, school children across this country

have been forced to shut their mouths

on school picture day.

- [Hakeem] Modern orthodontia has been

around since the early 20th century,

but braces in the fifties and sixties were super expensive.

It was something like the equivalent

of $16,000 in today's money,

so most families couldn't afford it.

- It was the number one thing

you heard parents complaining about.

"Oh God, what if this kid needs braces?"

Like, you never even heard about college.

It was like, how am I gonna afford braces on this kid?

- [Henry] But in the 1970s,

a new corporate perk changes teenage smiles across America.

- [Austin] In the 1970s, employers decide

that they can't give their employees a raise,

but they can provide something else.

Dental insurance.

- [Hakeem] With insurance braces are now

in reach for a lot more kids

and before you know it,

it seems like just about everybody's got a metal mouth.

- [Jason] Like a lot of kids in America, I wore braces.

Braces become a part of the universal teen experience.

- [Negin] Everyone had braces.

Everyone ended up having retainers.

Everyone threw their retainers in a garbage can at one point

and then had to go retrieve them from a garbage can.

- [Henry] And if you had the old railroad tracks

to fix your smile, it came at a painful price.

- These early braces are pretty much a torture device.

They are metal brackets attached

to individual teeth connected by stiff wires,

which your orthodontist tightens to loosen

and twist your teeth.

- [Austin] First you have the trauma of the installation,

then you get the pleasure of the pain

of the regular tightening,

and finally you get to walk around class all day

with food stuck in your teeth.

- [Henry] It's slow torture, but it's what you can't see

or feel that's even more dangerous.

- When the early pioneers are trying

to figure out what materials to use,

one metal that gets used a lot is cadmium.

Cadmium's awesome because it has a low melting point

so you can use it to easily melt

and then harden to attach things together.

- Cadmium is the same stuff that they use in batteries.

Think about putting a battery in your mouth for three

to four years and just sucking on in the entire time.

You're causing liver problems, bone problems.

So, it's solving a cosmetic issue for the most part

and creating really serious lifelong health issues.

- [Henry] Well, what happens when you are the kid

who has the kind of teeth

where metal in your mouth isn't enough?

Dentists create a new humiliation for you.

- An overbite and your teeth go over

is when the upper jaw grows quicker than the lower jaw.

- Overbites create this Bugs Bunny effect

that junior high bullies really revel in.

- [Austin] In 1953, an orthodontist

improves a contraption

to correct this called the face-bow.

This is the birth of the much made fun of headgear.

- [Jason] Finding out you were gonna

have to get headgear was a nightmare.

Now you've got the braces,

then you've got sort of these things come up and attach.

And I remember one kid in my class,

he had like the blue straps around his head,

so he literally had this medical appliance.

It's like, ah, he's not gettin' a date to the dance.

He's the headgear guy.

-[Austin] By the mid 1980s, orthodontists are prescribing

millions of these headgear appliances.

They're everywhere and it sort

of feels like a social experiment.

- [Dan] Anybody who was unlucky enough to have

to wear headgear when they were growing up knows

that they got relentlessly teased.

But the one thing that was worse

than the teasing was the way these things could fail.

- [Austin] The danger of this apparatus is it's held together

by firmly pulled rubber bands.

- These rubber bands are tight

and strong enough to move teeth embedded in your skull.

That's a lot of tension.

- If you turn your neck the wrong way or if you sneeze,

they could let loose and turn the face bow into a crossbow.

- Now, if you're lucky,

you just get smacked in the back of the head.

But if you're not lucky,

you get a sharp metal wire in your eye.

Plus that wire by the way is coated in your saliva

and so it's full of bacteria

and you're bound to get an infection,

if you don't go blind.

-[Hakeem] In 1985, a teen turned over in their sleep,

their head gear dislodged from their mouth and stabbed them

in the eye causing permanent vision damage.

- [Dan] You gotta remember too,

this is long before the age of anti-bullying campaign,

so it is just open season in school.

So, if you have bad teeth or if you have braces,

or God forbid, if you have headgear,

you just gotta take it.

-[Brian] To make yourself a stinky mouth social pariah

through your most formative years,

I think I'd rather take the the crooked teeth.

- [Henry] By the 2000s, safer metals are used in braces

and headgear gets less medieval,

- So they basically make them with breakaway straps

so that if anything's gonna pop off,

it's not gonna hit you in the eye.

- If you think braces were bad when you were a kid,

wait till you hear what people did

to get perfect teeth 200 years ago.

- [Rutledge] Today, dentures are seen as something

that only older people would wear,

but back in the day it was kind of something

that everybody was doing.

- In the 1800s, there's really no sense of dental hygiene,

so a lot of people are having tooth issues.

- [Rutledge] Most dentures are made out of ivory,

so they're very expensive

and essentially only really for the wealthy.

- [Henry] Ivory is so costly,

people will go to any lengths

to find denture alternatives.

- [Lance] It's June of 1815 on the battlefield at Waterloo.

Napoleon is on his rise.

This is the big battle between he and the coalition forces.

Around 40,000 people die

and looters take anything that's of value.

One of the things that was of value was the men's teeth,

because they can be turned into dentures,

so much so that dentures for years afterwards

were referred to as Waterloo teeth.

- [Rutledge] It's really gross.

There's gotta be a line.

They said George Washington had wooden teeth

and then some people said he might

have actually had a horse tooth or two.

I don't know whether teeth from a horse

or a dead soldier would be better.

Neither seem like a good idea.

- [Henry] The cadaver dentures look lifelike,

but they're death for your health and wellbeing.

- [Lance] The problem with using the human teeth

is because they're not soaked into the bone anymore,

they do slowly get more brittle.

They start to break off.

- So if you've ever wondered if a dead guy's teeth

can still get cavities, the answer is yes.

- [Lance] The dead guy's tooth that you've been chewing with,

breaks loose and you swallow along with your beef,

you swallow the dead guy's tooth.

There's nothing good about that.

- [Henry] Dentists search for a way

to hold false teeth in place more firmly,

and in the late 1800s,

the industrial revolution gives them the answer.

- In 1868, an inventor named John Wesley Hyatt

came up with something called celluloid.

- It can be melted and formed in different shapes.

You can color it.

So, celluloid quickly becomes the go-to material

for making people's dentures.

But it turns out that these celluloid dentures

have a drawback.

The base material, nitrous cellulose,

is what gunpowder is made from.

- [Rutledge] Say you're chewing something

and your teeth happen to brush up

against each other just right,

it is possible your teeth could explode in your mouth.

Of the most unpleasant things that I could think

of happening to a person, that's way up there.

- [Lance] In 1875, "The New York Times" writes

an article about the risk,

and they call it "Explosive teeth,"

and that tells everybody, maybe this isn't such a good idea.

- [Rutledge] Celluloid teeth are replaced

in the 1930s by acrylic teeth.

Thank goodness.

Today, dentures are thoroughly tested.

They are not made from dead people's teeth

and they don't have a gunpowder component.

- Thanks to modern medicine,

losing all your teeth is no longer a normal part of life

and neither is borrowing somebody else's.

- There was a time when having a starched collar

was a must for men, and if you didn't, you weren't stylish.

But if it was too stiff,

well, that was a whole other fashion emergency.

- [Austin] Keeping your crisp collar clean in the 1800s

is a difficult job.

In the city streets, horses kick up dust.

There's mud everywhere,

and most men only own two or three shirts at a time.

- And so, in a moment of great ingenuity

or perhaps uncontrolled rage, this woman in Troy, New York,

Hannah Montague is so sick

of washing her husband's shirts all the time

just to get the collar clean that she cuts it off.

So now she can just wash that piece,

takes basically no time and then reattach it

to the shirt each day.

I mean, it's such a great idea.

- [Negin] So a local businessman takes her idea

and decides to market a detachable collar.

It reattaches the shirt with studs

and it seems like a no brainer.

- [Bryant] The detachable collar is not only easier to clean,

it's easier to get stiffer and higher,

and this was a symbol of propriety

and dignity and brands are trying to outdo each other.

It escalates to the point that there are collars

that are three inches high

that go like right under your chin.

- One company, Arrow,

they have an ad campaign starting the Arrow collar man,

and this guy is such a heart throb

that women are actually writing him letters.

- [Henry] But then wearing

this sexy new status symbol takes a turn.

- In 1888, a shocking story

is printed in "The New York Times."

There's a man found in a park bench.

He's leaning forward, his face is completely black.

It looks like he's been strangled.

- [Austin] After a night of drinking,

he attempts to stumble home,

takes a rest on a park bench,

passes out and leans forward.

The police investigation determines

that he was strangled to death by his own collar.

- [Brian] This collar was killing people,

like Kujo around your neck,

but still people wore the collars.

- [Jason] You see more and more examples

of men being found strangled by their own collar.

So, the media ever desirous of trying

to come up with catchy names,

they call these collars father killers.

- [Henry] Despite the choking hazards,

detachable collars are popular well into the 20th century.

- [Brian] I think that the people

that kept wearing the collars were confident

in their ability to wear a shirt collar without dying,

and I think that's the least we can expect from ourselves.

- [Austin] Eventually, what dooms the detachable collar

is the change in fashions and new technologies.

After World War I, a more casual look

is embraced and you've got time saving devices

like washing machines,

which make doing your laundry less of a chore.

- [Natalia] It just shows you how powerful fashion is.

People are still choosing to risk getting asphyxiated

than miss out on the latest trend.

- Who knew that in the 1800s dressing up

could actually kill you.

And in the 1950s, dressing down could be equally dangerous.

- [Lance] Today your pajamas are for comfort.

They're not for style.

But in the post war era,

it becomes sort of a thing where it's glamour.

You want to look fashionable inside your house.

That is the new trend, then that means fashionable pajamas.

- [Hakeem] In 1953, there is a young man

in Chicago who takes this idea

of lounging to the extreme.

His name is Hugh Hefner of "Playboy Magazine."

- [Brian] The guy made the wearing

of pajamas acceptable in society.

I mean, if I can live my life in silk pajamas

with a smoking jacket,

why have society have we decided

that this is the way to go?

We should all be in pajamas right now.

- [Henry] Besides being more fashionable,

there's something else driving the pajama boom in the 1950s.

The fabric itself.

- In the 1930s, 90% of American silk

actually comes from Japan.

So that completely stops when World War II hits the country.

So Americans need another fabric

to make pajamas out of, and the answer is rayon.

Rayon is a synthetic fabric

that's spun from wood pulp and mimics silk.

It's actually initially known as artificial silk.

- Rayon looks like silk, it feels like silk,

and it's available at a fraction of the cost.

- [Henry] By the early 1950s,

the rayon industry does $100,000,000 in annual sales

and millions of Americans are wearing it to bed.

But as rayon rises, it collides with another booming trend.

[match strikes]

-[Hakeem] In the 1950s, smoking is very common.

60% of men are smokers, 30% of women.

They do it from the time they wake up

to the time they go to sleep.

- [Lance] And rayon essentially is a form of paper

and it burns like paper.

- So, people would go to bed,

they'd get in with their wife or husband,

they'd light up a cigarette,

and then the ashes or the burnt tip would fall

and they would just catch up like Roman candles.

- [Lance] After this happens a lot, rayon gets a reputation.

They start to call it flaming pajamas.

- [Henry] By the mid 1970s,

regulators come down hard on flammable sleepwear.

Pajamas must now be fire resistant.

- They don't outlaw rayon pajamas,

that would kill the whole industry.

Instead, they figure out a way around the danger.

- [Brian] Let's douse these pajamas

in a flame retardant chemical called tris.

It worked so well that they're like,

"Man, let's make pajammies

for the kids now with this stuff."

- In the 1970s, they start advertising pajamas

with big labels like fire resistant or fire retardant.

And it might seem strange to like,

really play up the fire retardancy of your clothes,

but if you're a person who grew up in the 1950s

with your pajamas catching on fire all the time,

it's actually quite a necessary thing.

- [Brian] The only problem with tris is,

it soaks into your skin and kills you.

- [Hakeem] So there's this UC Berkeley scientist

named Arlene Blum.

She discovers that the chemical

that these companies are putting on rayon garments

to make them flame retardant

is closely related to a chemical

used in pesticides that causes cancer and infertility.

- [Brian] So as with many of these things,

it's two steps forward,

one step back with a body count in the middle of it.

- [Kavitha] After research comes out,

federal regulators immediately

ban tris treated kids sleepwear,

and then soon after that,

they end up seizing all the sleepwear around the country.

- These days, pajamas are made from safer materials

like cotton and polyester.

It's one less thing keeping us up at night.

- If it means looking better,

people often turn a blind eye to their own safety.

But in the 1800s,

if you wanted to look really great,

it could cost you two blind eyes.

- [Lance] In the 19th century,

there's a thing called the Grand Tour.

It is a classical tour of Europe for wealthy young men.

- [Kavitha] Charles Dickens and Mark Twain

and even the Vanderbilts all do it.

You start in France and then you go to Switzerland

and then it ends in Italy.

Many of these men write poetry

and odes to the Italian women's beautiful dark eyes,

and they call them bella donnas or beautiful women.

- [Negin] So, the men come home from a tour

and they have developed a taste

for this dark sultry look, these dark eyes,

and the women are like, well, we've gotta deliver, right?

So, pharmacies start selling something

called the belladonna eye drop.

- [Jason] One drop of this belladonna eye drop in each eye,

your eyes become inky and dark and infinitely appealing.

- [Henry] By the mid 1800s, apothecaries in London, Paris,

and New York are selling belladonna eyedrops

over the counter.

- These eyedrops dilate your pupils,

so they don't actually change the color of the iris,

they just open up the pupil

so it looks like you have these big dark eyes.

- [Lance] The problem is the berry they're using

to make these eyedrops is actually a form of nightshade,

which is a well-known poison.

The Romans poison their arrows with nightshade

to make them extra deadly.

- [Hakeem] So, even though people know

that nightshade is dangerous,

it's the 1890s.

There's no regulators out there.

You can just walk out in the forest and grab some berries

and make some eyedrops and have women feelin' beautiful.

- [Lance] The thing about belladonna

is that it's such a powerful poison

that you use belladonna eyedrops

and they're going to dilate your pupil sometimes for weeks.

- To protect your vision,

if you stare at the sun or something bright,

your pupils are going to close down.

But if you use belladonna eyedrops,

it's stopping that process.

- So, your eyes are beautiful,

they're just not functioning properly.

- This will be like driving down the road

and bein' hit with somebody's high beams the entire time.

- [Jason] Women who use these eyedrops start

to experience headaches and dizziness.

They start getting really sick.

They start having blurry vision,

and in the most severe cases,

some women actually start to go blind.

- Ultimately, the nightshade family are neuro toxins

and they do damage to pretty much every system in the body.

So, eyedrops with chronic use

can cause blindness, coma, even death.

- [Henry] Regulation takes belladonna

off the shelves in 1938,

but the name lives on.

- [Kavitha] Today, when you go to the eye doctor

and they give you those drops

that are meant to dilate your pupils,

that's actually a synthetic form

of nightshade named after these women.

- I think it's a strange rebranding

of fundamentally a poison,

but I guess it's like a little joke

you can share next time you're at the eye doctor.

- If you think eyedrops in the 1800s were risky,

you won't believe what people were doing to their skin.

- [Austin] Beginning in the 1800s,

cities are expanding rapidly,

but sanitation is non-existent.

This is a environment rife for tuberculosis.

- It becomes a popular look to have pale skin,

and that pale skin provides a powerful contrast to red lips,

and that becomes the look

and that's brought to you by tuberculosis.

- [Kavitha] Oddly enough, the palor,

the fainting, the vulnerability,

these all play into

an already established ideal of femininity.

- [Jason] So, cosmetics manufacturers,

they're gonna figure out how to sell you things

that are gonna make you look that way.

- [Henry] Chemists realize they can help women

get that pale and vulnerable look

without all the baggage of tuberculosis.

- The beauty in fashion industry

is trying to really capitalize on this

and they make this thing

that makes you look pale called complexion wafers.

- [Jason] Complexion wafers come in a little box

and you can chew them up, sort of like Flintstone vitamins

and the promise is you chew few

of these a day and you'll have porcelain like skin.

- [Negin] So, women start taking these wafers.

The wildest thing is they actually work.

- [Henry] By the 1890s complexion wafers

are a bestseller.

They're commonly found on women's dressers

next to eyeshadow and rouge.

- [Kavitha] The complexion wafers really do work,

but that's because the key ingredient

is a rat poison called arsenic.

Of course, it's gonna make you pale, it's poison [laughs].

- [Jason] The wafers at one point are so popular

they even make it into the Sears catalog.

Imagine, they're between the trousers

and the wheelbarrows.

- If you take a closer look

at the advertising for these products,

the manufacturers use words like,

"Safe for everyday consumption."

They're making a point that this isn't dangerous.

- [Dan] Thing is by the 1890s everybody knows

that arsenic's bad for you,

and yet people keep popping these wafers

and nobody is stopping it from being sold.

I mean, it says arsenic right on the label.

It's called Dr. Campbell's Safe Arsenic Complexion Wafers.

There's no such thing as safe arsenic.

That's like saying friendly swarm of murder hornets.

- [Negin] What the arsenic is doing is killing

your red blood cells,

which is to say like, killing your life force.

- [Dan] Arsenic doesn't just attack your blood vessels,

it also attacks your nervous system.

So you get these worse symptoms like you get jittery,

you get really weak,

and over time some people end up getting cancer,

and even dying.

- Who knew that achieving a deathly look

just involve actually trying to slowly kill yourself.

- [Kavitha] By 1931, the government actually seizes

the final remaining units

of Dr. Campbell's Safe Arsenic Complexion Wafers

and charges the company with false advertising

because it's the falsest of advertising.

- Once modern science arrived,

looking like death warmed over

was suddenly out of fashion.

- Remember watching old movies set in the 1800s

like "Gone with the Wind,"

where the women had parasols

and wide skirts and tiny waists?

They looked elegant,

but dressing that way had a down side.

- [Natalia] For all of American history,

women have been trying to transform

their bodies to meet the latest,

most fashionable shape.

Very often that means getting a slimmer waist.

- [Negin] Today, it's through GLP-1s.

In the '80s and '90s there were like diet pills,

but back in the day it was corsets.

- [Natalia] A corset is a cone shaped harness

that is wrapped around your body,

and is laced as tight as possible

through a process called tight leasing.

- Not only does it show off feminine curves,

it shows that you've got a restraint.

It shows that you're in control.

It shows that you are disciplined enough

to wear effectively a torture device.

- By the 1860s, the industrialization

of steel brings corsets to the masses.

- [Henry] Steel corsets can squeeze

the width of an average woman's waist down

a whopping six to eight inches,

and nearly every woman in Europe

and North America wears one.

- This obsession with a small waist gets really intense.

Children are wearing them,

even pregnant women are wearing them.

One French dancer attracts people with her 14 inch waist.

- For comparison, 14 inches in circumference

is about the size of a miniature dachshund.

This is a very hazardous fashion trend.

- Extreme lacing can exert 40 to 50 pounds of pressure.

Your heart and your lungs just can't expand against that.

- [Negin] Turns out you can't smush

your organs into different places

because then your body starts breaking down.

- [Henry] Beginning in the 1870s,

doctors notice a string of mysterious deaths

in young corseted women.

- [Natalia] The pressure is so intense that it can twist

the ribs until they're folded

over each other like shingles.

- [Rebecca] To inhale, you have to expand your lungs,

and the corset is preventing you, literally from breathing.

It was such a common problem

that doctors called the condition death by corset.

- [Henry] By the turn of the 20th century,

experts are finally calling for a ban

and eventually women's fashion tosses the corset aside.

- By the early 20th century, the new woman is arriving.

This is a woman who is riding bicycles in bloomers,

who is advocating for suffrage,

who is a few years from being a flapper

with rising hem lines and short skirts,

and she's not about to be bound up by a corset.

- Believe it or not, corsets were only half the equation

for achieving that Scarlett O'Hara look in the 1800s.

Below the waist, there was even more trouble brewing.

- [Lance] Before the 1800s,

to achieve this fashionable billowing skirt look

that was so popular, you had to layer petty coats.

Petty coats are essentially underskirts

and you had to have four or five.

- [Kavitha] That achieves that shape,

but it's obviously really hot

and it adds a lot of weight,

in some cases up to 20 pounds of extra weight.

- [Rutledge] There's this breakthrough

in the 1800s called crinoline,

and it's like a cage that will hold up a dress

to give it this big beautiful sort of flowing

and very opulent and fancy look.

- [Henry] By 1860, crinoline factories

turn out thousands every day.

Steel crinolines cause skirts

to balloon 50% on average from four feet across,

12 feet around to six feet across, 18 feet around.

- [Kavitha] Imagine you have the steel cage around you

that's the size of a small car essentially.

They just keep getting bigger and bigger.

- [Negin] That is the same shape and size

as the capsule that John Glenn took into orbit.

- [Lance] It's funny that we would go to a fashion trend

that makes our fashion larger than our hallways

and our doorways.

They seem ridiculous.

- [Henry] But beyond their absurd size,

these skirts pose a more serious problem.

- There's no electricity yet, so everywhere you turn,

there's an open flame.

- [Rutledge] If you think about how big these

dresses really are,

you can't see the edges of everything,

you don't have mirrors on where you can see the back.

Suddenly you're just having a nice conversation

with a boy from the town over

and your whole dress is on fire.

- [Lance] By the middle 19th century,

3,000 people die in England alone from crinoline fires.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the famous poet,

crinoline fire kills his wife.

Two sisters of the writer Oscar Wilde die

in crinoline fires.

- [Rutledge] You'd think after the first one or two,

people would be like, "I don't know.

These things catch fire pretty easily."

No, no.

3,000, and they still use this dangerous fire hazard.

- [Henry] It's only changing lifestyles

that eventually brings an end

to gargantuan crinoline skirts.

- [Rutledge] Crinoline is eventually replaced

by the bustle,

which is really just kind of giving more

of a shape to the rear.

- [Kavitha] Now, women can still make a big statement

and they don't have to burn the room down to do it.

- In the '40s, some women ditch the skirt entirely

joining the war effort with a radical new look, pants.

- Do you remember when nobody talked about sunscreen

and people would do just about anything

for a deep, golden tan?

And if the sun couldn't do it fast enough the normal way,

well, somebody was bound to come up with an abnormal way.

- [Natalia] Post World War II America is a time

of expanded prosperity,

especially in the growing middle and upper classes.

You get new status symbols

like the ability to enjoy leisure time, vacation,

and so a tan becomes a symbol

that you can afford to enjoy life's spoils.

- [Negin] So, people like John F. Kennedy

are out there like symbols of youthfulness

and he's like sailing in the open waters

with this beautiful tan, and people wanna look like that.

- [Henry] But most people can't afford to jet off

to the tropics for a quick tan tuneup.

And German engineer Friedrich Wolf sees an opportunity.

- [Natalia] Friedrich Wolf becomes the father

of the fake bake.

He realizes that UV lights, which had been used in medicine

for therapeutic reasons can also be used to tan the skin.

And so, Wolf invents something

that makes tanning available year round and inside.

[sunbeds humming]

The sunbed.

This new innovation pops up in malls, gyms, salons.

They're everywhere.

- [Jason] The big flex becomes the off season power tan.

If you can walk through the office or go to your PTA meeting

and you're sporting this power tan in the middle of winter,

that's the status symbol.

- [Negin] It works 20 minutes at the local strip mall

and you come out looking

like you were at the French Riviera.

- [Henry] In the '80s, indoor tanning becomes

the fastest growing business in America,

soaring 300% in five years,

but doctors are less sunny on the future of tanning beds.

- Almost immediately studies come out linking UV radiation

to wrinkles burns melanoma.

- People now realize that the sun was dangerous

and now the thing is they thought was safer,

the tanning bed is also dangerous,

but they still want their tan.

- [Henry] Tanning beds aren't as hot,

but no doctor could predict

what they would come up with next.

- [Jason] Advertisements start to roll out,

promising you a rich dark tan,

one that requires no time in the sun

and you're gonna look good.

You're gonna have a tan all year round.

It's a tan in a pill.

- [Henry] Tanning pills seem like the perfect solution

for getting bronzed,

without burning off your skin.

By the mid 1980s, they are selling out

at health stores across America.

- [Lance] When tanning pills come out,

they are not regulated as if they are a pharmaceutical,

so everybody assumes that these are safe.

- [Natalia] However, there's an unexpected

effect of these pills.

The result is not quite what people are looking for.

Instead of that French Riviera bronze,

it's more like Halloween pumpkin.

- It turns out that the pills aren't some kind

of synthetic super chemical that people created.

It's a naturally occurring chemical,

which is related to betacarotene,

the chemical in carrots, for example.

- [Brian] It's the same stuff that will make a shrimp

and a flamingo pink.

Now, when you think of a healthy tan,

does your mind ever go to flamingos, shrimp, or carrots?

No way.

- [Lance] Each of these pills is gonna contain

about 30 milligrams

and you're taking four of those a day.

It's like you're eating a huge amount of carrots,

but you'd have to eat 10 to 15 pounds of carrots

to do the equivalent of these little pills.

Of course people are turning orange.

- [Henry] But your embarrassing color

is the least of your problems.

- [Lance] When you have so much of something in your system

that your system's not used to, it goes somewhere.

One of the places it tends to go is into your eyeballs.

It crystallizes inside your retinas.

So people see blurred vision and sparkling.

- The most serious problem with the pigment

is that it stops the growth of bone marrow,

which produces red and white blood cells.

In one case, this doctor sees this really sick 20-year-old

who's been taking these pills

and she's got bruises all over her.

Her skin is this kind of sickly orange.

- [Lancee] And unfortunately, she dies a few weeks later.

Finally, the FDA does step in.

It bans the sale of these pills and the fad goes away.

- The sun is free,

but you could just go outside for 15 minutes

and the sun will do what it's been doing

since the beginning of earth,

which is make you look good and healthy and tan.

These people were like, "Nah, modern chemicals will get it."

- Remembering the ways we tried to look our best,

whether it was plastic hair implants

or collars that choked us

or even exploding teeth,

the shortcuts we took weren't always easy on the eyes,

but despite the perils,

that's what made our hazardous history

a sight to behold.

[dramatic music fades]