Pre-French Revolution

The Pre-French Revolution, my personal favorite. This era might be overlooked in some scenarios, however in the terms of beauty it is one of the most influential eras of our time. Most of these beauty concepts were derived from paintings and clothing worn in the eighteenth century.

These paintings, like the one shown above, display women all dolled up - this wasn't all the time. Select women dressed up, called toilette, as a daily ceremony in front of an audience. This ceremony was originally created by Louis XIV, meant for royalty, however members of aristocracy and even the bourgeois classes put on their own ceremonies.
As for their beauty standards, hair, makeup, and fashion play a big part in completing the look. Women of the 18th century had either black, brown, or blonde hair; never red as it was considered unfashionable. This hair trend was especially in fashion during Marie Antoinette's reign. The black, brown, or blonde hair was typically worn in waves or curls. As for wigs, women refrained from wearing them, this was more of a male trend. Instead, women added false hair to their natural hair. This could be where the idea of extensions came in. Powdering the hair, both male and female, was also extremely in style and common. The article I found went on and on about what was used for specific hairstyles. Nonetheless I found that part of the article to be rather boring.
Just like both men and women wore false hair, both men and women wore cosmetics. Makeup was usually worn by people of higher ranking, and was intended to not look natural, instead more like paint. Women usually wore heavy amounts of white paint, large streaks of rouge, and beauty patches (mouches). Over the years, cosmetics declined in price and became more available to the middle class. The middle class usually did not wear large amounts of rouge and paint, as the higher class did. Instead of red tones, the middleclass preferred pink tones. The makeup look mainly consisted of pale skin, large rouge circles on the cheeks, darkened brows, and red lips.
Overall, I discovered the look to be extremely artificial, but I guess that was the goal. The first article I found was extremely informative and detailed.

"Women’s Hairstyles & Cosmetics of the 18th Century: France & England, 1750-1790." Dmod RSS. Web. 07 May 2016. <http://demodecouture.com/hairstyles-cosmetics-18th-century/>.