Results: Beauty And The Beast -- Wildest Ways We Used To Achieve It

Ads for the 1930s Beauty Micrometer boasted that the cage mask "analyzes facial flaws for makeup." And it was from beauty company Max Factor. While the Beauty Micrometer looks like something out of a horror movie, it actually just measured your face and head to determine where you should apply blush, shadow, and highlights to the greatest effect. Did you or someone you know ever owned this contraption?

The focus on facial beauty has been around for a long time, and some went to great lengths, and excessive means to achieve it. Isabella Gilbert's metal brace could dig those desired dimples right into your face and a vacuum procedure that claimed to suck the wrinkles right out of your skin, called The Glamour Bonnet, which claimed to improve one's complexion by reducing air pressure around the skin, but looked more like the equivalent of putting a plastic bag over your head were only two such contraptions sold in the 30s and 40s. Have you ever gone to an extreme to achieve "that perfect look"?

Men were not immune to vanity. Victorian scientists believed that increasing blood flow to the head could cure baldness. Before hair plugs and Rogaine, men with receding hairlines donned crazy caps with heaters, head pumps, and vibrators in hopes of growing a new lush head of hair. Have you, as a man or woman, ever tried anything extreme to stimulate hair growth?

In the good old days, women (and apparently the men who loved them) desired that hourglass figure, and products that promised to get you one, ranged from the painful to the dangerous. Some even claimed to increase your "lung capacity" at the same time (and we all know what part of the body that was talking about). Did you ever try any strange products or techniques to increase your "lung capacity", ladies?