The daughter of tenant farmers, upstart Florence Nightingale Graham took a job in a New York City salon, learned to emulate WASP femininity, created a line of beauty preparations, and reinvented herself as.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? By the turn of the century, the service economy that grew around the whiteness craze provided opportunities to female entrepreneurs of both races. Whites used lead-based compounds to enhance their paleness, while blacks developed potions for lightening dark skin and managing kinky locks. As the nation recovered from the Civil War, its mainstream racial identity crystallized around visions of whiteness, and women scrambled to look good, Anglo-Saxon style. Contrary to popular myth, beauty culture originated in the fantasies and aspirations of Victorian women, not in the minds of male managers and chemists. Peiss's fast-paced narrative traces the birth, evolution, and maturation of the American cosmetics industry, from its roots in nineteenth-century storefronts to its current manifestation in corporate boardrooms. Her beautifully crafted book will delight and inspire readers interested in social, women's, and business history and in larger questions about gender, race, identity, and culture.

In Hope in a Jar, Kathy Peiss, a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, places the cosmetics trade under a microscope, examining its inner workings to tell a captivating story about girlish dreams and feminine desires, female entrepreneurship and American capitalism. Yet this high-profile, profitable enterprise has escaped the scrutiny of business historians - until now. Mascara, lipstick, rouge, eye shadow: few female pocketbooks lack these essential tools for 'making up.' Since the 1920s, the cosmetics industry has been a multi-million dollar trade, with advertising campaigns that dominate the fashion magazines. Maybelline, Revlon, Max Factor, Cover Girl: few American women do not recognize these brand names. New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, 1998.

Hope in a jar by kathy peiss