Fashioning Health as Beauty: Cosmetic Rulings in Early Islam

Abstract

The Qur’an asserts that God creates perfected forms and prohibits humans from altering them. Despite the divine mandate, the sunnah and other authoritative sources permit some alterations of the body but prohibit others. What might account for the discrepancies between law and practice? The following argument proposes that the rules governing the use of prosthetics, wigs, tattoos, epilation, orthodontia, silk, or hair dye reflected deep-seated fears about illness and the spread of disease, more so than concerns about humans modifying what God has made perfect. As a result, divine notions of bodily perfection became more closely aligned with efforts to secure public health and well-being,with humans definingwhat selves could be cosmetically (a)mended, and in what ways. Scientific evidence has proven that humans tend to shun those who display signs of illness. In fact, human faces made to look sick are found to generate more innate revulsion than healthy ones. Recent works in biology, psychology,