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  • Selling Beauty: Cosmetics, Commerce, and French Society, 1750–1830
  • Janine Lanza
Selling Beauty: Cosmetics, Commerce, and French Society, 1750–1830. By Morag Martin (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. 228 pp. $55.00).

Morag Martin’s Selling Beauty describes how the French beauty empire, represented by firms such as L’Oréal, Lancôme and Estée Lauder, began with the efforts of small entrepreneurs and artisans who persuaded women to abandon their homemade cosmetics in favor of commercially made products. In the process of creating this domain of commercial beauty, craftsmen and [End Page 545] entrepreneurs also shaped modern consumer culture and norms of male and female appearance. Martin argues that the beauty industry, responding both to critics and supporters, used new modes of marketing to expand their commerce and further to define beauty as a key component of French culture. Although the moral center of their industry, namely the use of products to alter and even mask the appearance, came under heavy fire, the beauty industry used new marketing techniques like scientific attestations and notions of naturalness to create an image of their products that drew in buyers. In the process, Martin shows how the cosmetics market formed a central aspect of the consumer revolution of the late-eighteenth century, alongside the history of fashion, domestic consumption and growth in consumer demand. Martin skillfully and persuasively shows both the history of cosmetics as well as the ways that commodity shaped broader social trends such as emerging notions of masculinity and femininity.

Martin divides her book into three sections, reflecting the varied ways she wishes to consider the beauty industry. First Martin considers consumption, production and marketing of cosmetics from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth century. In 1750, the starting point of this study, cosmetics were largely the purview of aristocrats at court who used face paint largely in accordance with the norms of court culture. Perfume, wigs and cosmetics formed part of the uniform of court without which one could not be admitted into that rarified society. Women outside of those social circles prepared their own personal care products which did not resemble those used by elites. But the end of the eighteenth century saw entrepreneurs pushing women to buy commercial beauty goods, labeling them more hygienic and more fashionable than homemade ones. Further, the dropping prices of such goods made them accessible to all women—rich and poor alike. By the time of the French Revolution, women from all social classes were using face paint to enhance their appearances.

Martin explains how the wider use of cosmetics provoked sharp criticism on several fronts. The use of makeup to change the appearance defied Rousseauian ideals of transparency and naturalness; critics also cited the latent harm of such beauty products, potentially lethal concoctions sold by quacks. Those criticisms became more trenchant with the onset of the French Revolution, a moment when the fashion and beauty industries are supposed to have been decimated by the vilification of anything associated with aristocratic habits. But Martin shows how successful cosmetics sellers shifted their marketing vocabulary in the face of such challenges. Savvy merchants sought out scientists and doctors to endorse their products and to attest to the safety of their ingredients and manufacturing processes.

This move toward embracing the medicinal qualities of cosmetics strongly shaped their use and marketing in the nineteenth century. Advertising campaigns embraced the safety and healthfulness of makeup. An early emphasis on how much products could enhance a woman’s beauty and appearance of youthfulness fell away, giving way to advertising that promoted the medical properties of these products. Further, this scientific approach to selling cosmetics allowed manufacturers to appeal to men as well. As Martin demonstrates, the use of makeup by men fell away, as fashions at the end of the eighteenth century and during the French Revolution called for unadorned, natural masculinity. But while men banished paint and powder from their toilettes, male fashions increasingly emphasized lush, long hairstyles that many men could not achieve [End Page 546] naturally. Thus cosmetics sellers promoted tonics, potions and other products to stimulate the scalp, thus bringing men back into their shops.

Martin also discusses...

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