All the Rage
Stories from the Frontline of Beauty: A History of Pain, Pleasure, and Power: 1860-1960
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- US$13.99
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- US$13.99
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A panoramic social history that chronicles the quest for beauty in all its contradictions—and how it affects the female body.
Who decides what is fashionable? What clothes we wear, what hairstyles we create, what colour lipstick we adore, what body shape is 'all the rage’. Thestory of female adornment from 1860- 1960 is intriguingly unbuttoned in this glorious social history. Virginia Nicholson has long been fascinated by the way we women present ourselves – or are encouraged to present ourselves – to the world.
‘Women have been fat or slim, hyperthyroid or splenetic, sallow or pink-cheeked, slouched or erect, according to the prevalent notions of beauty…’ Cecil Beaton, The Glass of Fashion (1954),
In this book we learn about rational dress, suffragettes' hats, the Marcel wave, the Gibson Girls, corsets and the banana skirt. At the centre of this story is the female body, in all its diversity – fat, thin, short, tall, brown, white, black, pink, smooth, hairy, wrinkly, youthful, crooked or symmetrical; and – relevant as ever in this context – the vexed issues of body image and bodily autonomy. We may even find ourselves wondering, whose body is it? In the hundred years this book charts, the western world saw the rapid introduction of new technologies like photography, film and eventually TV, which (for better and worse) thrust women – and female imagery – out of the private and into the public gaze.
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Historian Nicholson (Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes) scrupulously details how shifting notions of femininity shaped a century of women's fashion. She begins in the 1860s, contending that the era's rigid moral code translated into a desire to police women's bodies: corsets constrained figures; hair was "obediently" pinned, combed, or brushed back. The dawn of the 20th century saw those strictures loosening to make way for more permissive social conventions, as well as lower necklines, slit skirts, and lingerie that accentuated women's sexuality. In the 1910s and '20s, bobs, boyish figures, and sleeker silhouettes dominated as women's increased participation in sports and the workplace fueled a rising "preference for lissomeness over bulk" that persisted through the ensuing decades, which saw women don more form-fitting outfits, shorter skirts, and bikinis. Nicholson astutely draws out how "demands and pressures on the female body" increased along with "progress towards equality and liberation" as a patriarchal culture sought to reassert its control over women. Feminist fashionistas will want to add this to their shelf.
