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Inventing Beauty

By Meg | September 1, 2007

I just got done reading Inventing Beauty: A history of the innovations that have made us beautiful! by Teresa Riordan. I’m a history buff and interested in the “why’s” of culture, so I couldn’t pass up checking this book out when I saw it in the local library. It’s a fascinating read for those us of who wonder how the bra was developed or what was under those huge skirts worn by American women during the Civil War era. The author focuses mainly on the 1800s and 1900s, and each chapter focuses on a different part of the body: eyes, lips, breasts, hair (i.e. body hair), skin, waist, hands, hips, and derriere. Sadly, the author didn’t cover feet, hair (i.e. on top of the head), or legs. Of course, a book could be written about each of those.

The book is about more than just the engineering behind the bustle (surprisingly complicated though it may be). The author gives her own theories on why styles change as they do, shifting attention from one body part to the other:

I think women have responded to the male predilection for novelty by using technology to reinvent themselves—to make themselves novel again and again. This works because the male mind tends to equate the part with the whole … By gamely shifting the focus of male attention from the breasts to the hips to the legs to the belly to the face and back again, an individual woman transforms herself from one woman into many women. (p. xxii)

In other words, men get bored and we give them something new to look at in order to keep them from running off to someone new - which is not to say that maybe we women just get bored with our own looks, too. I’d be bored to death at a nudist camp. I really enjoy changing my look with clothes and accessories on a daily basis.

Of course, one can’t talk about beauty without discussing the pain some women go through for the right look. The book is full of descriptions of products that were detrimental to the health of their users (like using X-rays to remove hair), and plenty more that were just a waste of money (hmmm…. that sounds familiar). And no, apparently men didn’t create all those torture devices. According to the author:

I tried to approach this project without preconceptions, but I must admit that lurking at the back of my mind was the thought that, surely, these must be tools of oppression by men on an unsuspecting female public. Alas, several years of intensive research failed to confirm–in fact, undermined–this point of view. (p. xv)

Will we see the return of the hoop skirt or bustle in our own era? Frankly, who knows. As George Santayana once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Whether we consider fortunate or unfortunate, fashion seems to have the attention span of a kitten, which leads us back again to many previously discarded trends. Then again, there is always a remarkable influx of new ideas that soon turn into “last season”, then “retro”, then plain ol’ “old-fashioned”. So I’ll end this with another quote from the author:

Because these inventions cast an illuminating light on our own era, my main hope is that this book will help readers look at the current generation’s fashion and beauty customs with a fresh eye. Which of the inventions that we take for granted today–belly rings, fat-blasting electrodes, laser hair removal, Botox–from the distance of a century will look hilarious, dangerous, or simply retro-chic? That is impossible to know but it sure is mind-bendingly fun to guess.

Tags: Books, Fashion, Reviews

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