hope in a jar the making of america's beauty culture

Peiss first discusses what types of cosmetics women wore in the nineteenth century. In short, cosmetics provided employment in addition to beauty for many women. Peiss challenges current prevailing beliefs that the beauty industry was dominated by men to seduce women into narrowly defined visions of 'beauty.' As she effectively demonstrates, the beauty industry, particularly between 18, was almost completely woman-run: women owned the companies producing cosmetics, women sold cosmetics, female beauty operators used and endorsed the products. 'About this title' may belong to another edition of this title.In Hope in a Jar, Kathy Peiss examines cosmetics and beauty culture in the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

This is a well-researched, fascinating book that is more than a picture of the business of American beauty it is a window into over a hundred years of American women's history.

Peiss addresses in particular how makeup has long been marketed in ways that assert the superiority of 'white' features and skin over that of other races, and how African-Americans and other minorities in the cosmetic industry have dealt with this issue. Indeed, Peiss finds, the beauty industry was one of the first to bring a substantial number of women a decent income.įor American consumers, the marketing of makeup has long stirred issues of race, class, and morality. Madame Walker, one of the many African American women who were able to find careers in the beauty industry, rose from laundry lady to head of a small cosmetic empire. Elizabeth Arden came from a poor Canadian family but remade her image into one of 'upper-crust Protestant femininity' in order to sell her products. The early entrepreneurs in the beauty business were often women, most of them as skilled at reinventing themselves as at making over their customers. 'Not only tools of deception and illusion,' says historian Kathy Peiss of our culture's powders and pastes, 'these little jars tell a rich history of women's ambition, pleasure, and community.' A welcome new angle on the subject of our culture's obsession with personal appearance, Hope in a Jar reveals that the American beauty industry was founded on more than just clever advertising or patriarchal oppression. Beauty products have withstood the slings and arrows of more than 100 years of public debate, charged with being guilty of everything from immorality to self-indulgence to anti-feminism.

Hope in a jar the making of america's beauty culture