People are generally aware that individuals will push the absolute limits in an attempt to look beautiful. In the world today, we tend to turn to a wide range of makeup or surgery to get the look that we desire. However, back in history they had far fewer options than what are available today.
Take the 14th century as a perfect example. There was a trend whereby you had to look very pale as that was seen as being the most beautiful look of all, but some women would take things to an absolute extreme to achieve the desired look. It is known that in order to do this, they would use leeches and basically bleed themselves to such an extent that they would lose some of their color and become paler. They would effectively dice with death to achieve what they thought was going to be the desired look.
Of course, some would go too far and lose too much blood, so they would become very pale indeed when they ultimately died as a result of their quest to look beautiful.