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book: Hope in a Jar
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Hope in a Jar

The Making of America's Beauty Culture
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2011

About this book

How did powder and paint, once scorned as immoral, become indispensable to millions of respectable women? How did a "kitchen physic," as homemade cosmetics were once called, become a multibillion-dollar industry? And how did men finally take over that rarest of institutions, a woman's business?

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. And she highlights the leading role of white and black women—Helena Rubenstein and Annie Turnbo Malone, Elizabeth Arden and Madame C. J. Walker—in shaping a unique industry that relied less on advertising than on women's customs of visiting and conversation. Replete with the voices and experiences of ordinary women, Hope in a Jar is a richly textured account of the ways women created the cosmetics industry and cosmetics created the modern woman.

Author / Editor information

Kathy Peiss is Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Zoot Suit: The Enigmatic Career of an Extreme Style, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Reviews

"Incisive, lively. The model of everything social history should be."

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  • Publicly Available

    Frontmatter

    i
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  • Publicly Available

    Contents

    vii
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    Preface

    ix
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    Introduction

    1
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    1. Masks and Faces

    9
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    2. Women Who Painted

    37
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    3. Beauty Culture and Women's Commerce

    61
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    4. The Rise of the Mass Market

    97
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    5. Promoting the Made-Up Woman

    134
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    6. Everyday Cosmetic Practices

    167
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    7. Shades of Difference

    203
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    8. Identity and the Market

    238
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    Notes

    271
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    Illustration Acknowledgments

    317
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    Index

    319
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
November 29, 2011
eBook ISBN:
9780812205749
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Main content:
352
View content
https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812205749
eBook ISBN: 9780812205749
Keywords for this book
American History; Women's Studies; Gender Studies; American Studies
Audience(s) for this book
For universities and colleges of further and higher education
Downloaded on 11.4.2026 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.9783/9780812205749/html
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