From the back cover:

“How did powder and paint, once scorned as immoral, become indispensable to millions of respectable women? … In Hope in a Jar, historian Kathy Peiss gives us the first full-scale social history of America’s beauty culture, from the buttermilk and rice powder recommended by Victorian recipe books to the mass-produced products of our contemporary consumer age.  She shows how women, far from being pawns and victims, used makeup to declare their freedom, identity, and sexual allure as they flocked to enter public life. …”

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This book is fabulous!  I absolutely could not put it down, and for the 2 weeks or so it took me to read it, I continually turned to whoever was next to me to ask, “Did you know that ….?”  Wouldn’t you if you learned that:

-In 1770 the English Parliament passed an act to annul marriages of “those who ensnared husbands through the use of ’scents, paints, cosmetic washes, artificial teeth, false hair, Spanish wool, iron stays, hoops, high-heeled shoes and bolstered hips.’ ” (p26)?

-Even as late as 1915, a legislator in Kansas “proposed to make it a misdemeanor for women under the age of forty-four to wear cosmetics ‘for the purpose of creating a false impression”(p55)?

The fundamental question that Kathy Preiss asks — how makeup went from being regarded as something immoral and deceptive to something that celebrates women (and is a basic woman’s right — see Tangee lipstick ad below) — is one that I think quite a few women have wondered about.  Her 270 -page response is such a pleasure to read and is so full of historical facts that I recommend it to anyone interested in how the American beauty industry has gotten to where it is today.  An absolute must!!  My grade: 10/10.  Available at amazon.com.

-Images from Hope in a Jar, p28,29 and 241