For Appearance's Sake

One thing that I have noticed in fantasy stories regarding the appearances of the characters is often how perfect they are. They may have perfectly straight teeth that look like they were made of pearls, the women often have long silky hair that gleams in the sunlight, or the females may often have a scent about them (like in "Inheritance Cycle" where Arya constantly smells of pine- at least, I believe it is pine needles. I haven't read the series in a while, so you'll have to forgive me). Normally this is not an issue considering our modern day and age where hygiene is very important, but this becomes a problem if your setting is in a Medieval-esque world or in an earlier time period.

Let me put it this way: hygiene did not become a major issue until about a hundred years ago. Unless you were Japanese, who were a very clean people, you did not take a bath that often, and, if you did, it only happened every month or so. For this reason, people wore lots of perfume and makeup to cover up their dirtiness. It was particularly worse in more rural regions where farmers and such were constantly working, and so they would come home covered in mud and who knows what. In these more rural areas, you not bathe very frequently and then, it was most likely only before attending important events. This form of hygiene would probably make us retch if we lived during those times, but keep in mind that no one else noticed the smell or your dirtiness that much unless you move from one area to another or between different cultures.

Not only were people dirty, but they were not concerned with their hair very much either. Soap was not common, and conditioner and hair dryers had not yet been invented yet. Not to mention the lice and other living things that could live in one's hair, especially a woman's. And women, unless they were more of the barbaric stock, probably ran a comb through their hair in the morning and put it up for the rest of the day. So, one would imagine that their hair was very unkempt and greasy from lack of washing.

And now, on to teeth. Dentists and orthodontists did not exist back then, and people did not brush their teeth. So finding someone with perfectly straight white teeth was probably a diamond in the rough and very rare.

My point in saying this is that most stories today, ones that are set in pre-modern eras, tend to have some character that has excellent hygiene along the lines of what we would see today. Your story may be a Medieval fantasy, but keep in mind that appearances back then were very different. You're not going to see perfect people in their appearances or in regards to hygiene. Particularly if your story has a lot of traveling in it, I doubt people in the traveling party are going to look well-groomed for very long. This may seem something odd to talk about writing, but I believe it is the details which can often make your world seem more real and down-to earth, no matter what genre or time period it is set in.