Hope in a Jar : : The Making of America's Beauty Culture / / Kathy Peiss.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Penn Press eBook Package American History
• VerfasserIn: Peiss, Kathy,
• Place / Publishing House: Philadelphia : : University of Pennsylvania Press, , [2011]; ©2011
• Year of Publication: 2011
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (352 p.) :; 78 illus.

How did powder and paint, once scorned as immoral, become indispensable to millions of respectable women? How did a "kitchen physic," as homemade cosmetics were once called, become a multibillion-dollar industry? And how did men finally take over that rarest of institutions, a woman's business?In Hope in a Jar, historian Kathy Peiss gives us the first full-scale social history of America's beauty culture, from the buttermilk and rice powder recommended by Victorian recipe books to the mass-produced products of our contemporary consumer age. She shows how women, far from being pawns and victims, used makeup to declare their freedom, identity, and sexual allure as they flocked to enter public life. And she highlights the leading role of white and black women-Helena Rubenstein and Annie Turnbo Malone, Elizabeth Arden and Madame C. J. Walker-in shaping a unique industry that relied less on advertising than on women's customs of visiting and conversation. Replete with the voices and experiences of ordinary women, Hope in a Jar is a richly textured account of the ways women created the cosmetics industry and cosmetics created the modern woman.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- 1. Masks and Faces -- 2. Women Who Painted -- 3. Beauty Culture and Women's Commerce -- 4. The Rise of the Mass Market -- 5. Promoting the Made-Up Woman -- 6. Everyday Cosmetic Practices -- 7. Shades of Difference -- 8. Identity and the Market -- Notes -- Illustration Acknowledgments -- Index