Download Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture AudioBook Free
How did natural powder and coloring, once scorned as immoral, become essential to an incredible number of reputable women? How did a "kitchen physic", as homemade cosmetic makeup products were once called, become a multibillion-dollar industry? And how did men finally dominate that rarest of establishments, a woman's business? In Wish in a Jar, historian Kathy Peiss provides us the first full-scale cultural record of America's beauty culture, from the buttermilk and rice powder suggested by Victorian recipe catalogs to the mass-produced products of our own contemporary consumer age group. She shows how women, far from being pawns and patients, used cosmetic to declare their independence, identity, and sexual allure as they flocked to enter in public life. And she features the primary role of white and dark 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 discussion. Replete with the voices and experiences of standard women, Wish in a Jar is a richly textured bill of the ways women created the cosmetic makeup products industry and cosmetic makeup products created the present day woman. The book is released by College or university of Pennsylvania Press.
