Milk bath Milk bath A milk bath is a bath taken in milk instead of water. Often other scents such as honey, rose, lavender and essential oils are added. Milk baths use lactic acid, an alpha hydroxy acid, to dissolve the proteins which hold together dead skin cells. There are legends that Cleopatra bathed in donkey milk daily for her complexion. These legends have not been confirmed and some historians believe that Roman Empress Poppaea set this bathing fashion after Cleopatra's death. Queens Catherine Parr and later Elizabeth I of England used milk baths to make their skin appear more youthful and
Cleopatra who paid for sex with their lives. Cleopatra also became appreciated outside the Western world and Middle East, as the Qing-dynasty Chinese scholar Yan Fu wrote an extensive biography of her. Georges Méliès's "Robbing Cleopatra's Tomb" (), an 1899 French silent horror film, was the first film to depict the character of Cleopatra. Hollywood films of the 20th century were influenced by earlier Victorian media, which helped to shape the character of Cleopatra played by Theda Bara in "Cleopatra" (1917), Claudette Colbert in "Cleopatra" (1934), and Elizabeth Taylor in "Cleopatra" (1963). In addition to her portrayal as a "vampire" queen,