Perfection
400 Years of Women's Quest for Beauty
Published on 10. September 2024
Book
Hardback
368 pages
978-0-300-26458-6 (ISBN)
Description
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.
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.
Reviews / Votes
"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"Margarette Lincoln chronicles the myriad extremes that women have gone to across four centuries in pursuit of the ideal face and form (if not pancreas). It's not pretty. Fortunately, it's pretty fascinating."-Joanne Kaufman, Air Mail
"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
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
32 color + 16 b-w illus.
Dimensions
Height: 238 mm
Width: 160 mm
Thickness: 35 mm
Weight
622 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-300-26458-6 (9780300264586)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Margarette Lincoln was a visiting researcher at the University of Portsmouth and is curator emerita of the National Maritime Museum. She is the author of numerous books, including London and the Seventeenth Century and Trading in War, which was shortlisted for the Wolfson Prize.