American Beauty: A Social History...Through Two Centuries of the American Idea, Ideal, and Image of the Beautiful Woman

This original and engaging work chronicles the social history of the perception of feminine beauty in America from the fashionable pallor (occasionally induced by doses of arsenic) of the antebellum years to the debut of bare limbs in Atlantic City in 1921 and the impact of Hollywood stars since the 1940s. With meticulous research Lois Banner charts the shifting models of American beauty: the Steel-Engraving Lady, ethereal and submissive with her oval face and heart-shaped mouth; the Voluptuous Woman; the boyish Soubrette; the Gibson Girls and the advance of naturalness; the great and small revolutions of taste and decorum that express not only changing ideals of beauty but the currents of American society itself.