Beauty Culture and Women’s Commerce

• Published in: Hope in a Jar pp. 61 - 96
• Main Author: Peiss, Kathy
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: United States University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc 29.11.2011; University of Pennsylvania Press
• Subjects: African American culture; African American studies; African Americans; Agricultural products; Agriculture; American minorities; American studies; Anatomy; Animal products; Anthropology; Applied arts; Arts; Behavioral sciences; Biological sciences; Biology; Black communities; Business; Businesspeople; Communities; Consumer goods industries; Cosmetics; Cosmetology; Cream; Cultural studies; Dairy products; Economic disciplines; Economics; Employment; Entrepreneurs; Ethnic groups; Ethnography; Ethnology; Hair; Human populations; Human societies; Industrial sectors; Industry; Integumentary system; Labor economics; Manufacturing industries; Milk; Occupations; Persons; Population studies; Social groups; Social sciences; Sociology; Women; Working women
• ISBN: 9780812221671; 0812221672
• DOI: 10.9783/9780812205749.61

Cosmetics today seem quintessential products of a consumer culture dominated by large corporations, national advertising, and widely circulated images of ideal beauty. The origins of American beauty culture lie elsewhere, however, in a spider’s web of businesses—beauty parlors, druggists, department stores, patent cosmetic companies, perfumers, mail-order houses, and women’s magazines that thrived at the turn of the century and formed the nascent infrastructure of the beauty industry. Few of these enterprises used the kinds of systematic marketing and sales campaigns so familiar to contemporary Americans. Nonetheless, the proliferation of products, services, and information about cosmetics and beauty definitively recast