All the rage : stories from the frontline of beauty: a history of pain, pleasure, and power 1860-1960 Cover Image

All the rage : stories from the frontline of beauty: a history of pain, pleasure, and power 1860-1960 / Virginia Nicholson.

Summary:

"Who decides what is fashionable? What clothes we wear, what hairstyles we create, what color lipstick we adore, what body shape is "all the rage". The story of female adornment from 1860-1960 is intriguingly unbuttoned in this glorious social history. Virginia Nicholson has long been fascinated by the way we women present ourselves--or are encouraged to present ourselves--to the world. In this book, we learn about rational dress, suffragettes' hats, the Marcel wave, the Gibson Girls, corsets, and the banana skirt. At the centre of this story is the female body, in all its diversity--fat, thin, short, tall, brown, white, black, pink, smooth, hairy, wrinkly, youthful, crooked, or symmetrical; and--relevant as ever in this context--the vexed issues of body image and bodily autonomy. We may even find ourselves wondering, whose body is it? In the hundred years this book charts, the Western world saw the rapid introduction of new technologies like photography, film, and eventually television, which (for better and worse) thrust women--and female imagery--out of the private and into the public gaze."-- Amazon.com.

Record details

ISBN: 9781639367061
ISBN: 1639367063
Physical Description: 519 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Edition: First Pegasus Books cloth edition.
Publisher: New York : Pegasus Books, 2024.
Copyright: ©2024

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references (pages 458-499) and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	Victoriana -- Belle epoque -- New century -- Jazz Age -- Modern girls -- Beauty is a duty -- New look.