Author unveils beauty secrets
Parents worried their daughters get into makeup or other beauty practices too young these days can take comfort that it’s always been that way.
In the late 19th century, women younger than 30 who used makeup were thought to be pushing the envelope. Flappers of the 1920s, however, kicked over those traces, and by the late 1930s, half of high school girls in a study reported arguing with parents over wearing lipstick.
Those are but a few of the fascinating facts in Teresa Riordan’s book “Inventing Beauty” (Broadway Books), which chronicles the ways American women tried to enhance their appearance from the time of the first Women’s Rights Convention in 1848 to the 1960s.
Riordan admits she started her research at least partially assuming beauty products aimed at women were “tools of oppression foisted by men on an unsuspecting female public.”
But what she found out is we tend to do it to ourselves, with women responsible for large numbers of the creams and contraptions used over the years. That includes inventors of “gay-deceivers,” otherwise known as falsies, and a push-up bra built of sheet metal, writes Riordan.
Not that the men didn’t try to have their say in how women should be allowed to paint or prime their bodies.
In 1892 two women — one pro, one con — testified before the House of Representative’s Agricultural Committee on women’s use of cosmetics.
The honorable committee’s focus seems to have been on whether women had the right to do so, not the safety or health risks associated with the products themselves.
Seems some things haven’t changed much, including just how risky some of the products that came to market promising feminine flair were. In one case, a depilatory made by a New York City beauty parlor owner in the 1930s caused paralysis, stomach pain and blindness, among other side effects.
Its key ingredient was thallium acetate, used to poison rats.
Nowadays — despite federal regulation of cosmetic products — it’s bogus Botox injections that are paralyzing the unsuspecting seeker of cosmetic enhancement.
And while some of us were mystified to learn that U.S. military surgeons were offering free breast augmentation surgery to service women, the military actually has a long and thought-provoking history of helping women remain attractive, Riordan reports.
World War II brought shortages in materials often used in beauty products, such as rubber, steel and castor oil, but “cosmetics were viewed as vital to the war effort.” The rationale was they helped sustain morale among women, some of whom, like Rosie the Riveter, found themselves working in weapons factories wearing overalls.
Speaking of Rosie, her brassiere played a part in the story of the second World War too, says Riordan. Some defense manufacturers mandated women workers wear bras, as opposed to corsets, or supplied them with “vulcanized” protectors.
And the War Production Board during those years of rubber scarcity declared bras for women workers “an essential item,” though it did regulate how much elastic the garment could contain.
As the book vividly illustrates, there was no end to the list of beauty devices and products women then tried that now seem either laughable or truly frightening: waist-squeezing, spine-damaging corsets resembling instruments of torture, a lip-reshaper, fat roller, various Kafkaesque breast enlargers.
Riordan elaborates a bit too lengthily on the development and use of the hoop skirt and rear bustle, used to create a wildly fictional derriere.
But if you think we’ve come a long way and put all the dubious beauty paraphernalia behind us, just ponder the popularity of stiletto heels, liposuction or buttocks implants.