Pageants, Parlors, and Pretty Women: Race and Beauty in the Twentieth-Century South

by Blain Roberts

From the South's pageant queens to the importance of beauty parlors to African American communities, it is easy to see the ways beauty is enmeshed in southern culture. But as Blain Roberts shows in this incisive work, the pursuit of beauty in the South was linked to the tumultuous racial divides of the region, where the Jim Crow-era cosmetics industry came of age selling the idea of makeup that emphasized whiteness, and where, in the 1950s and 1960s, black-owned beauty shops served as crucial sites of resistance for civil rights activists. In these times of strained relations in the South, beauty became a signifier of power and affluence while it reinforced racial strife.
Roberts examines a range of beauty products, practices, and rituals--cosmetics, hairdressing, clothing, and beauty contests--in settings that range from tobacco farms of the Great Depression to 1950s and 1960s college campuses. In so doing, she uncovers the role of female beauty in the economic and cultural modernization of the South. By showing how battles over beauty came to a head during the civil rights movement, Roberts sheds new light on the tactics southerners used to resist and achieve desegregation.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Gender Studies, Social Issues

384 pages, Hardcover

First published March 17, 2014

Reviews

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Roberts’s history of southern beauty rituals is engaging and thoughtful, but it by no means exhaustive. Roberts focuses on the social and political history of beauty, showing that the practices white and black southern women engaged in in the early 20th century both challenged and upheld white supremacist visions of beauty. It was curious to me that the book didn’t spend time on the material aspects of beauty, which was perhaps due to her focus on the social implications of beauty rituals. Beyond her discussion of Madam CJ Walker and her brief mention of Mary Kay Ash, there was little mention of the objects, brands, products, and trends that made up southern beauty regimens. I did wish that Roberts spent as much time on lipstick and cold cream as she did on bleaching creams, although perhaps these products did not speak to her thesis as much. Overall, this was a useful and interesting book. More could be written on the history of southern women and their relationship to beauty, and that’s what left me unsatisfied when I finished it.

[Debra Foster Greene · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read about southern women, black and white, and the complex use of beauty to control them. Interestingly enough, Roberts argued that although the use of cosmetics had been in the early twentieth century been connected with prostitution in the African American community and preached against by black ministers, by the 1930s such Race women as Nannie Helen Burroughs, Charlotte Hawkins Brown and Alice Dunbar-Nelson accepted make-up as appropriate armor. for respectable African American women

[Rachel Baack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Summary: Blain Roberts walks readers through the development of beauty practices and culture in the American South during the twentieth century. She addresses the ways in which beauty culture impacted and developed among Black and White Southern women differently, and she explores what Southern beauty culture can tell us about racism, patriarchy, and class structure.

[Addy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honestly, I wasn't conviced at first regarding the Miss America Pageant being used as a agent to co-sign the segregationists and tormenting/mocking black women, but further into her argument, I had to concede that the author was right about the Miss America Pageant in the 20th century.

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitly not a quick read. Very well researched book about how beauty has been used and portrayed.