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

by Lois W. Banner

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 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.

Genres: History, American History, Nonfiction, Gender

548 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

A founder of the field of women's history in the 1970s, Lois Banner is Professor of History Emerita at the University of Southern California. Banner graduated from UCLA, with a Master's Degree in European History and a Ph.D. from Columbia University in American history. Along with Mary Hartman, she founded the Berkshire Conference in Women's History, the biennial conference that has been held ever since and that is considered the major event in the field. She was the first woman president of the American Studies Association, and in 2006 she won the Bode-Pearson prize of the American Studies Association for Lifetime Achievement in the field. Professor Banner is also a past president of the Pacific Coast Branch, American Historical Association, and of the Coordinating Committee in Women's History of the American Historical Association. She has also been a fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation, of the Radcliffe Institute of Harvard College, and of the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia.

Reviews

[Rachel Whelan · Rating 3 out of 5]

An engaging overview of the perception of beauty with a focus on white American women between the Civil War and the start of WWI. Banner concedes in the introduction that there is a heavy focus on NY, and that holds true; you often wonder what you're missing by hearing mostly about the rise of the department store or the emphasis on the trends as set by people like the Astor's. That being said, Banner uses primary sources to supplement what we can glean from art and media of the time to present a steady picture of Beauty with a capital B.
The final chapter flew by with little resolution (and no conclusion). In the final chapter I noted how feminism was underscored, yet the development of feminism or the fight for suffrage was less critical throughout prior chapters. It would have been interesting to have the chronological discussions of feminism and beauty.