London, the Beauty & the Beast

            Every time we read about London in the XVI century, is often used to know about Tudors, religious civil wars and Queen Elizabeth I, but there a plenty of facts related to realize that London was not always the Beauty, it was the Beast, too. Here you have some aspects of that dichotomy:

1. - The Fashion: Meanwhile the lower middle-class puritans’ wives had a stiffed-matron air, the aristocrats and upper middle-class followed another feminine’ beauty conception: A very white skin and rouge lips. They smeared with talc, which caused them problems when it was warm.

2. - London Street View: The houses were clustered each other. The city walls were held up – which memory has been conserved in every neighbour´s names ended in gate, where were the old city gates –, because the authorities tried the newcomers did not stabilise in the City, the business neighbour that Lord Mayor wanted to the shelter of bad-living people. In that era were dated the develop of the London periphery neighbours, rush built up, without any order or hygiene, by and for the lowly classes of the population, newcomers from the countryside.

(Historia de la Humanidad, Los Siglos XVI y XVII, Larousse 2005, pp. 10-11).

            Here are two of many examples of the common life in London, but is known there are more of them like the dirty dark places where the people did the shopping, the overwhelming overpopulation of the XVI century in London, the highest-class’ need for luxuries such as jewellery and furniture, the fashion opulence related to fabrics, textures and colours, etc. Shows us the Beauty and the Beast by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont in flesh, in this case in city, called London.

            Is it related to black and white conflict in USA?