Prior to the 1920s, cosmetics were part of the prostitute’s dress. In Victorian America, women who used cosmetics contradicted expectations for women to be pious and selfless. Women should not, after all, draw attention to their appearance. As the United States entered the modern era after World War I, advertisers and marketers sought to define what made women “modern.” Their definition rested on consumption of cosmetics and other beauty products.
Partially the result of publicity techniques developed during the war, the advertising industry took off in the 1920s. From the perspective of advertisers, Americans had to be taught how to shed their puritanical notions of thrift and how to consume. While earlier economic growth periods had relied on manufacturing, it was the consumer economy that generated growth in the 1920s. The cosmetics industry was an important part of that development. The war also provided better-paying jobs and greater economic and social independence for women. With more disposable income, women chose to purchase cosmetics. The proliferation of chain stores and dime stores in cities further expanded the availability and attraction of new beauty products.
Hollywood contributed significantly to the appeal of cosmetics. Colored eyes and lips, powder, and rouge were tools that Hollywood makeup artists like Max Factor and Helena Rubinstein used to adorn female actresses. As Hollywood increasingly set the cultural trends for the rest of the country, cosmetics became more acceptable for women to wear. They were encouraged to shed their selfless images for pretty faces that required powder and rouge. Advertisers emphasized that women needed to attract men through their appearance and their smell. To do so, women needed lipstick, mouthwash, and perfume. Attracting men was one goal that advertisers promised women would achieve with cosmetics; happiness was another. It could be attained through material acquisition and more self-indulgent behavior. Hair and clothing styles changed alongside the emergence of cosmetics. Beauty parlors proliferated, which was another venue for cosmetics sales. In 1927, chemical inventions allowed women to “perm,” or permanently wave, their hair.
The emphasis on physical attraction reflected changing attitudes about gender relations. Increasingly, women
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And men engaged in sexual relations before marriage, often with the person they intended to marry. This trend counteracted behavior during much of the Victorian era, when men often engaged in premarital sex with prostitutes while women were encouraged to be chaste.
Cosmetics were disproportionately associated with younger women who wished to be defined as modern. Younger women’s use of cosmetics sometimes resulted in the ire of Americans who were a generation older. Cosmetics also defined part of the youth culture that wished to distance itself from parents by smoking, consuming alcohol, dancing, and listening to jAZZ.
Much of the cosmetics industry focused on changing the attitudes of the white middle-class in order to accept images of women that differed from the selflessness of an earlier time. However, what came to be labeled as “modern” was already being practiced by single working-class women who challenged social mores about women’s proper behavior long before middle-class youth embraced cosmetics and aesthetic definitions of beauty. African-American women also invested in the cultivation of beauty, defining their own race-specific standards. Indeed, Madam C. J. Walker and Annie Turnbo Malone made their fortunes selling cosmetic products to black consumers. Cosmetics became and remained a major industry in these years.
See also DRESS; SEXUALITY; YOUTH.
Further reading: Kathy Lee Peiss, Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1998).
—Natalie Atkin
World History
