Detail, DeMeridor
advertisement, 1926.

 
To Those who are Willing to Listen:

by Cristopher Levalian

A Review of

Kathy Peiss’ HOPE IN A JAR,
The Making of America's Beauty Culture

    THE EYES are the window to the soul.  So the saying goes, at least.  But it
is the reflection of the eye that perhaps holds a greater truth.  The obsession
with appearance begins with the bathroom mirror and the mental projection
of the social ‘norm’ as described by popular culture.  And behind this mirror
a wonderland of consumer products are stored—where the hopes of entire
generations of women and men alike dwell in a state of consumer euphoria.
That many of these products are harmful rarely enters the everyday thought
process; within these bottles, like the veritable genie of old, lies the promise
of youth and vitality.

š———›

Cosmetic usage is not a natural process and not as deeply rooted in American history as
many would like to believe.  In Hope in a Jar, the Making of America’s Beauty Culture,
Kathy Peiss addresses the shifting values in American culture which have resulted in the
surge of cosmetics applications in the last one hundred years.  Peiss holds that the
nineteenth century embrace of a ‘Beauty Culture’ was a willful answer to the changes in
society that thrust many women into the paid labor market—or simple public life—for the
first time, a move that required cosmetics for impression and thus obliterating the view of
the ‘made up woman’ as a painted prostitute.  Makeup grew in popularity as a form of
self-expression that did not rely on traditional women’s roles and those values which had
been placed in flux.  For example, in the classic Victorian framework, women were to be
the moral arm of society, charged with the upkeep of the home and rearing of children in
a moral manner that was separate and sheltered from the immoral business world of the
breadwinner.  In this world, respectable women were virtuous and reflected an inborn
purity.  When used, cosmetic products were to whiten, or ‘purify’ the skin, but as a remedy
—never a mask or cover, which would be an immoral deception.  Yet, when thrust into a
modern work environment in the 1800s, women were charged with looking their best.
Makeup was a way to gain a leg up on the competition.  More importantly, perhaps, the
beauty culture allowed employment opportunities in industries many men feared to tread.
To perpetuate their own employment, women consciously broke from the remaining
caveats of the Painted Lady and spurred demand for chemical processes.

In a narrower sense, one must ask to what degree men were exposed to this evolving
culture.  While not Peiss’ primary targets, she nevertheless provides several tantalizing
statistics.  Men were not natural consumers, however.  Shopping was in the traditional
domestic sphere of women and men needed special coaxing to enter the consumer market.
According to Richard Ohmann, consumer or ‘mass’ culture in the modern form arose only
as early as the 1890s.¹ With Theodore Roosevelt thumping the virtues of vigor and
stamina, masculinity was perhaps paramount to the male ego, effectively destroying the
market for any ‘feminine’ products among men.  With this in mind, as Peiss points out, in
the early 1920s many cosmetics companies attempted to broaden their market to include
male consumers.  Foremost was the attempt by Carl Weeks to launch the line Florian in
1929.  Weeks offered a line of face powders, skin lotions, and moisturizers in simple
‘masculine’ red and black boxes sold beside cigar stands in many pharmacies.  The line
was a disaster.  Whatever the name or box design, no professional outside of the theater
could be seen with face powder—whether he used it secretly or not—and certainly would
not be known to purchase such a substance.² However, relevant for our purpose here,
there was one product that a man could be enticed to purchase:  soap.  Here too image was
essential.  As Ohmann points out, in McClure’s magazine in October, 1899 an ad for Pears’
Soap appeared.  The caption was telling.  “The first step to lightening The White Man’s
Burden is through teaching the virtues of cleanliness.  Pears’ Soap.”³ The picture depicted
historic war hero Admiral Dewy standing balefully before the mirror.  The implication was
plain.  Only six years after the so-called ‘advertising revolution,’ during which pictures
and emotive appeals first appeared in advertisements, the message of male bathing had
advanced to the point of making soap a badge of civilization.  Failure to wash might imply
a closer relation to the native in the lower right corner or, worse yet, the devils in the
Philippines mightily conquered the year before by the progressive United States.⁴ It was
not until the ‘care packages’ and strict regimen of World War II—which included the use
of perfume to mask lack of bathing in the field—that this trend began to change.  As Peiss
noted, Business Week in 1953 reported the ‘startling’ statistic that men had taken to
shaving, on average, five times per week, that nearly half were using aftershave and over
a third were using deodorant.⁵ Though a clear step up from 1900, one can only imagine
Business Week’s response to the current routine of most American Males.  The use of
consumer products has clearly increased in the last century.

 1.  Richard Ohmann, Selling Culture:  Magazines, Markets, and
      Class at the Turn of the Century (London: Verso, 1996), 34.
 2.  Kathy Peiss, Hope in a Jar: The Making of the American Beauty Culture
      (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1998), 163-164.
 3.  Ohmann, 203.
 4.  Ohmann, 202.
 5.  Peiss, 254.
___________________________________________________________

As the use of consumer products accelerated, some began to notice deleterious side
effects.  Chemical processes were long identified by women as causes of hair loss—
particularly among African Americans.  This requires some justification.  After the Civil
War and through the early twentieth century, the stereotype of the backwards African
proved exceedingly hard to break.  Accordingly, African American principles of beauty
were held to the same standards as mainstream middle class culture:  light skin, straight
hair, and ‘refined’ features.  To fit this trend, African Americans turned to face bleaches
and hair straightening systems.  They often met with tragedy.  Hair loss became so
prevalent among African American women that an entire industry was born to cater to it.
As Peiss identified, Madam C.J. Walker and Sarah Breedlove became two of the most
successful female entrepreneurs of their age by selling home remedies for hair loss to
their friends and neighbors.⁶ One cannot help but draw a parallel to the struggle of present
day men in dealing with hair loss themselves.  In the end, Walker and company concluded
that straightening systems in general were the culprit, as many employed dangerous
chemicals and searing heat.  Many modern products could be so classified.  As detailed by
the report “Skin Deep”, a tribute to a path breaking report by the same title published in
1934 on chemical abuse in consumer products by the consumer watchdog Environmental
Working Group, consumer shampoos and conditioners contain high levels of acid, chlorine,
and other known skin irritants.⁷ More than a cause of hair loss, however, the Working
Group’s report casts a grim shadow upon the cosmetics industry that would be well at home
in Peiss’ study.

The quality of consumer products has been debated for nearly a century.  As Peiss noted,

in 1930 the American Medical Association printed a report on the chemical contents of the
depilatory cream Koremle, which noted high quantities of rat poison.  Several years later,
they offered similar warnings of the eyelash dye Lash Lure which contained aniline dye,
which blinded and disfigured a customer.  Unfortunately, despite public outcry, only a few
states managed to ban dangerous ingredients in consumer products in the 1930s.⁸

Nevertheless, dangerous products continued to make it to grocery store shelves all over
the country.  Perhaps the worst, Nadinola, contained enough ammoniated mercury to cause
serious skin damage and had received customer complaints for nearly twenty years before
altering its formula.⁹

As this was a full twenty years after the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1915, one can only
dare wonder as to the contents of products at the turn of the century.

Under these circumstances, it should come as little surprise that in 1975 researchers
Bruce N. Ames and H.O. Kammen reported to the National Academy of Sciences that
most commercial hair dyes sold in the United States contained high quantities of known
mutagenic compounds.¹⁰

  6.  Peiss, 67-69.
  7.  “Skin Deep,” Environmental Working Group, accessed on 10 Sep 2005.
  8.  Peiss, 197.
  9.  Peiss, 221.
10.  Bruce N. Ames, H.O. Kammen, and Edith Yamaski. “Hair Dyes are
       Mutagenic:  Identification of a Variety of Mutagenic Ingredients,”
       Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the Unites States of
       America 72 (June, 1975): 2423.
___________________________________________________________

Ultimately, the use of consumer products is a choice.  While we can and should hold cosmetics companies
accountable for the quality of consumer products, there is not a vast conspiracy behind their use.  Cosmetics
were willingly promoted by women as a means of advancement decades before the birth of large-scale
consumer culture. Even this culture, as Richard Ohmann points out, cannot be a convenient scapegoat
as all mass advertising was undertaken by and for the newly arisen Professional Managerial Class
—the very men and women who were their prospective readers.¹¹

Mass culture can be easily manipulated for political end, yet ultimately exists at the pleasure and
whim of its audience. The PMC that Ohmann identified saw new products as modern and progressive.
They were involved in high stakes image-conscious jobs and demanded products to look their best.
That the products they received were sub par remains deplorable, but they were hardly thrust upon
them through invasive advertising. As Peiss noted,

“although reading Skin Deep had caused [many] to “lose all confidence in cosmetics,”
women repeatedly asked Phillips, the study’s author, “for the name of safe rouge.” ¹²
Skin Deep, in either of its forms, fell flat for touching on a highly sensitive issue.  One must
never assume the role of a crusader saving Humanity; Humanity ultimately gets what it deserves.
The glut of consumer products can only be brought curtailed by knowledge, by education of their effect upon the very health of the user.  In that, both Peiss and the EWG are successful, but
only two voices drowned beneath the chanting cry of a multitude bent on a love affair with their
‘millions of tiny bubbles.’

As in all things, change can only come to those who are willing to listen.

11.  Ohmann, 118.
12.  Peiss, 200.
______________

Cris is a graduate student finishing his degree in social history at Eastern Michigan University.  He holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree, summa cum laude, with majors in American history and business management, from the same institution.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Return — Index