The fashionable hair trends for the spring and summer of 2012? Streaks of color throughout slightly tousled hair. The color of the streaks depends on the individual’s overall hair color, but popular shades include peaches, light pinks, bright blondes and even some muted orange.

These streaks of color have been popular with celebrities for some time. It is now infiltrating into the fashion industry as demonstrated in Peter Som’s most recent fashion show.

Colored streaks can be added to pencil straight hair or hair with wonderfully flowing waves. The addition of these highlights will give any hairstyle an edge. At Peter Som’s show, the darker hair was enhanced with lighter color streaks, and the lighter hair was adorned with light pink and peach strands.

Amazingly, this fashion statement can be achieved without ever dying your hair. Colorful extensions are available that can be placed on one side of the front section of your hair. These extensions can be worn effortlessly with almost any hairstyle. However, hair that is a tad disheveled adds even more edge to this look.

Hair Chalking with Wax Pastels or Traditional Chalk Another way to obtain color streaks without the commitment is by chalking your hair. This is a relatively new technique, and it works very well. You can wet small sections of your hair or soak the colored piece of chalk you want to use. All you do is rub the chalk on the sections of hair that you want to streak. If you are using a traditional chalk, you need to apply hairspray prior to beginning this process. If using wax pastels, set it by using heat.

You have the option of just coloring your bangs or the tips of your hair. With very little effort, you can color your luscious locks from top to bottom.

The nice thing about these techniques is that they are not permanent. You can go crazy at your bachelorette party with rainbow streaks in your hair and still be the sophisticated bride with the up-do the next day!

Throughout history women have done just about anything to achieve beauty, even if it kills them – literally. For every potentially dangerous and odd ancient beauty regime, we are sure glad that there is a much safer and more modern approach used today.

Lead eyeliner, (that’s not painful at all!)
Once upon a time (this is no fairy tale mind you) ladies of the Middle East used to grind up lead – an obvious metal poisoning element when consumed– and apply it to their eyelashes, eyebrows and eyelids. You’ve seen the warnings on various lead-based products to never consume lead, right? Well, I have a feeling that rubbing lead around your eyes is equally, if not more severe.

Today, thankfully, there are much safer ways to make your lashes, brows and lids look great. With the creation of mascara, eye liners, primers and eye shadow, women have a much easier and harmless way to make their eyes stimulating.

A little poison to achieve a little radiance
Women in England used to ingest arsenic for the purpose of achieving a certain glow to their skin. As we all know, arsenic is deathly poisonous. Although those English women had beaming skin, they had to pay a price – shorter, much shorter life spans.

Lucky for us, we have learned a lot over the past couple centuries about what affects the look and texture of skin. Simple things like cleansing, exfoliating, consuming fluids (non-poisons of course) and maintaining certain diets, in addition with modern skin creams can help keep skin beautiful and glowing.

The alternative uses of lion urine
Venetian women in the past used to pour lion urine on their hair and sit in the sun to achieve their beautiful blonde highlights.

Fortunately, we have advanced our methods for highlighting hair over the years with do-it-yourself kits or by going to professional cosmetologists and hair dressers at salons. Regardless of the method you choose to don those beautiful blonde locks, you can rest assured that you won’t need to worry about using lion urine, or any kind of urine for that matter, to achieve your desired golden color.

Bug Blood (do you even need to guess?)
In England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, lovely ladies of the time sought rich red lip coloring. Don’t we all? To achieve that luscious red tint, beauties would take the squashed remains of insects and rub it on their mouths for that crimson-red shine.

Unless you’re partial to using insect guts as lip balm, you too can achieve lusciously red lips at a much easier price. Between lip balm, lip gloss and lipstick, women today have several choices to gaining that ruby-red look without having to go to extremes.

It’s safe to say the days of using animal urine, insect remains and poisons as beauty products are behind us. Just remember, the next time you’re putting on your makeup or opening a new hot red lip stick, to thank all the dedicated beauties of the past, who sacrificed themselves to make today’s products realities.