Hope in a Jar by Kathy Peiss

Hope in a Jar by Kathy Peiss

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.

"Incisive, livelyThe model of everything social history should be." * Los Angeles Times *

Kathy Peiss is Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Zoot Suit: The Enigmatic Career of an Extreme Style, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780812221671
ISBN 10	0812221672
Title	Hope in a Jar
Author	Kathy Peiss
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	University of Pennsylvania Press
Year published	2011-09-16
Number of pages	352
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.