Perfection
400 Years of Women's Quest for Beauty
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Yale University Press
Published:10th Sep '24
Should be back in stock very soon
A colourful account of women’s health, beauty, and cosmetic aids, from stays and corsets to today’s viral trends
Victorian women ate arsenic to achieve an ideal, pale complexion, while in the 1790s balloon corsets were all the rage, designed to make the wearer appear pregnant. Women of the eighteenth century applied blood from a black cat’s tail to problem skin, while doctors in the 1880s promoted woollen underwear to keep colds at bay. Beautification and the pursuit of health may seem all-consuming today, but their history is long and fantastically varied.
Ranging across the last four hundred years, Margarette Lincoln examines women’s health and beauty in fascinating detail. Through first-hand accounts and reports of physicians, quacks, and advertising, Lincoln captures women’s lived experience of consuming beauty products, and the excitement—and trauma—of adopting the latest fashion trends.
Considering everything from body sculpture, diet, and exercise to skin, teeth, and hair, Perfection is a vibrant account of women’s body-fashioning—and shows how intimately these practices are related to community and identity throughout history.
“replete with the kind of revelatory historical anecdotes that make me so glad not merely that properly clever and learned writers such as Lincoln exist, but that those beyond academia can reap the benefits of their work”—Megan Nolan, Daily Telegraph
“With dazzling intellectual acumen, this book examines the various ways in which women’s bodies have been expressed culturally. . . . A fascinating exploration of shifting beauty standards.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Whiteners, rouges, chicken gloves and skin dews: this immensely readable account investigates 400 years of women’s attempts to look their best. About so much more than personal vanity, Margarette Lincoln shows how beauty culture is bound up with complex value systems and social change.”—Carol Dyhouse, author of Glamour: Women, History, Feminism
“Perfection offers a thorough and holistic exploration of a subject which is often mistaken as superficial. It expertly weaves elements of the present into its investigation of the past in a way that is accessible, relatable, and highly informative. I’m sure many a curious mind will eagerly devour this.”—Bernadette Banner, fashion history YouTuber and author of Make, Sew and Mend
“A fantastic book on the history of women’s pursuit of health and beauty, well written and rich with historical detail. The aesthetic swings of fashion are well contextualized within broader historical trends, such as the growing commodification of beauty and the forms of media which shape ideas and ideals.”—Joanne Entwistle, author of The Fashioned Body
ISBN: 9780300264586
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
368 pages