The sonnet may also be understood as portraying an early reaction to women using cosmetics. The introduction of cosmetics should be viewed as a paradigm shift rather than a progression along the same spectrum. Margreta de Grazia reads Sonnet 127 in these terms: "Old values have been purged. Sweet beauty is stripped of her title (hath no name) and her sanctioned place (no holy boure), cast out into the contaminating open air (profaned) and thereby exposed to abuse and violation (in disgrace). In the place of 'beauties rose' now rules black." Helen Vendler also examines this sonnet with an eye on cosmetics, "How did a black haired, black eyed woman come to be the reigning heir of beauty? The sonnet explains that the invention of cosmetics disgraced true beauty by allowing every ugly woman to become beautiful."