All the Rage : Stories from the Frontline of Beauty: A History of Pain, Pleasure, and Power: 1860-1960 Hardback

A panoramic social history that chronicles the quest for beauty in all its contradictionsand how it affects the female body.

"Women have been fat or slim, hyperthyroid or splenetic, sallow or pink-cheeked, slouched or erect, according to the prevalent notions of beauty." Cecil Beaton, The Glass of Fashion

Who decides what is fashionable? What clothes we wear, what hairstyles we create, what color lipstick we adore, what body shape is "all the rage". The story of female adornment from 18601960 is intriguingly unbuttoned in this glorious social history. Virginia Nicholson has long been fascinated by the way we women present ourselvesor are encouraged to present ourselvesto the world.

In this book, we learn about rational dress, suffragettes' hats, the Marcel wave, the Gibson Girls, corsets, and the banana skirt. At the centre of this story is the female body, in all its diversityfat, thin, short, tall, brown, white, black, pink, smooth, hairy, wrinkly, youthful, crooked, or symmetrical; andrelevant as ever in this contextthe vexed issues of body image and bodily autonomy. We may even find ourselves wondering, whose body is it? In the hundred years this book charts, the Western world saw the rapid introduction of new technologies like photography, film, and eventually television, which (for better and worse) thrust womenand female imageryout of the private and into the public gaze.