hope in a jar the making of america's beauty culture

'Middle-classĪmericans,' she writes, 'often placed these images in their personal albums, often on the same pages as photographs of family and friends.' They also started seeing photographs of celebrities: actresses, socialites, ballet dancers. Peiss notes that with the advent of photography in 1839, people began to see themselves in a new (and suddenly permanent) way. New presence in shops, clubs and theaters.' Rather, it capitalized on patterns of women's social life - their old customs of visiting, conversation and religious observance, as well as their 'The beauty trade they developed did not depend upon advertising as its impetus. 'Handicapped in pursuing standard business practices, they resourcefully founded salons, beauty schools, correspondence courses and mail-order companies they pioneered in the development of modern franchising and direct-sales marketing 'And women seized their chances, becomingĮntrepreneurs, investors, manufacturers, distributors and promoters.

'The very notion of femininity, emphasizing women's innate taste for beauty, opened opportunities for women in this business, even as it restricted them elsewhere,' she writes.

Peiss approaches the cosmetics industry not with the feminist cry of the 1960s that the men who run it victimize women by objectifying them, but with the premise that the beauty business was built largely by women for women from the 1890s With, though with her kind of academic writing (always clear, sometimes dry), they would be well advised to stop skipping class. Peiss, a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts and the author of the highly praised 'Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York,' no doubt has her own flock of Ernos to contend I thought of Erno while reading Kathy Peiss' meticulously, almost lovingly, researched social history, 'Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture.'

From that day on, everyone called her Erno.

Six hours and a few hundred dollars later, she returned with her new 'skin system,' some white bottles and a bar of black soap. Week before final exams, my college roommate skipped a day of classes to go into Boston to Saks Fifth Avenue for the opening of the Erno Lazslo SkincareĬlinic. JBOOKS OF THE TIMES / By ALEX WITCHEL 'Hope in a Jar': How Women Spawned America's Beauty Culture 'Hope in a Jar': How Women Spawned America's Beauty Culture

Hope in a jar the making of america's beauty culture