All Made Up
The Power and Pitfalls of Beauty Culture, from Cleopatra to Kim Kardashian
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- ¥2,400
発行者による作品情報
A fascinating journey through history and culture, examining how makeup affects self-empowerment, how people have used it to define (and defy) their roles in society, and why we all need to care
There is a history and a cultural significance that comes with wearing cat-eye-inspired liner or a bold red lip, one that many women feel to this day, even if we don’t realize exactly why. Increasingly, people of all genders are wrestling with what it means to be a woman living in a patriarchy, and part of that is how looking like a woman—whatever that means—affects people’s real lives.
Through the stories of famous women like Cleopatra, Empress Wu, Madam C. J. Walker, Elizabeth Taylor, and Marsha P. Johnson, Rae Nudson unpacks makeup’s cultural impact—including how it can be used to shape a personal or cultural narrative, how often beauty standards align with whiteness, how and when it can be used for safety, and its function in the workplace, to name a few examples.
Every woman has had to make a very personal choice about her relationship with makeup, and consciously or unconsciously, every woman knows that the choice is never entirely hers to make. This book also holds space for complicating factors, especially the ways that beauty standards differ across race, class, and culture. Engaging and informative, All Made Up will expand the discussion around what it means to participate in creating your own self-image.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Nudson debuts with a wide-ranging survey of "people's use of makeup throughout history and the influence it has had on culture and social structures." Refuting patriarchal attitudes that dismiss beauty culture as only for women, Nudson notes that men and women in ancient Egypt wore eyeliner, and that gay men in the U.S. during Prohibition used lipstick to "flout expectations of masculinity." Nudson also discusses how Japan's economic downturn in the 1990s gave rise to the phenomenon of androgynous "herbivore men," some of whom wear makeup to promote a "softer" version of their baby boomer fathers' "overworked masculinity," and explains how Venezuela's "transformistas," a subculture of trans women, leverage the national obsession with glamour to "create an image to be in control of their sexuality, gender, and lives." In 1920s Chicago, a female lawyer helped get a convicted murderer released by using hair dye, makeup, and lessons in "American mannerisms" to give her the look of a "proper" woman, while Josephine Baker's fame, sexuality, and "beautiful appearance" made her an ideal spy for the Allies during WWII. Full of intriguing anecdotes and trenchant commentary on the relationship between conventional beauty standards and misogyny, classism, and racism, this is an invigorating examination of the "rules and assumptions that govern appearance."
