Globalizing Beauty - (Worlds of Consumption) by Hartmut Berghoff (Hardcover)

About the Book

Beauty matters. Throughout the world, more and more people from all walks of life spend time and money to make themselves beautiful because beauty expresses identity and shapes status and success. Whether white or black, male or female, young or old, gay or straight, working- or middle-class, Western or non-Western, democratic or fascist, people everywhere have adopted a central maxim of the twentieth century: everyone can be beautiful, and everyone should become beautiful. This volume tracks the historical roots and meanings of modern beauty cultures in the twentieth century, drawing on examples from Europe, North America, the Near East, Asia, and Africa.

Book Synopsis

This volume aims to advance our understanding of beauty's role in modern consumer societies by bringing together fresh scholarship that addresses a common set of questions from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including especially history, but also black studies, women's studies, German studies, sociology, and anthropology.

Review Quotes

'Chock full of useful information and marvelous counterintuitive insights alike, this spectacular collection demonstrates the enormous cultural and economic ramifications of the global pursuit of beauty. Ranging from Jewish pageant queens and the Nazi cosmetics industry through Kikuyu headshavings in Kenya, lipstick in Sumatra, and muscle-men in the postwar U.S. to Muslim male nose jobs in present-day Tehran, the essays scramble all our assumptions about what is traditional and what is modern. This is a fabulous and compelling book.' - Dagmar Herzog, Distinguished Professor, Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA, and author of Sexuality in Europe: A Twentieth-Century History

'This volume reveals the centrality of beauty and appearance in modern societies, illuminating consumer cultures, technologies of the body, and concepts of identity and difference in the twentieth century. With topics ranging from cosmetics and soap to beauty pageants and plastic surgery, these excellent essays give particular insight into the tensions between the global expansion of Western beauty culture and the tenacity of local practices.' - Kathy Peiss, Nichols Professor of American History, University of Pennsylvania, USA, and author of Zoot Suit: The Enigmatic Career of an Extreme Style

About the Author

Christina Burr, Department Of History, University Of Windsor, UK Jennifer V. Evans, Department Of History, Carleton University, Canada Mila Ganeva, Department Of German, Russian And East Asian Languages, Miami University, USA Geoffrey Jones, Harvard Business School, Harvard University, USA Karin Klenke, Department Of Social And Cultural Anthropology, Georg August University Of Göttingen, Germany Sara Lenehan, Oxford University, UK Michael R. Müller, Institute For Art And Material Culture, Dortmund University Of Technology, Germany Uta G. Poiger, History Department, Northeastern University, USA Véronique Pouillard, Department Of History, Conservation And Archeology (Iakh), University Of Oslo, Norway Christiane Reichart-Burikukiye, Department Of History, Justus Liebig University Of Giessen, Germany Anne Sonnemoser, Institute For Advanced Study In The Humanities (Kwi), Essen, Germany Althea Tait, Department Of Women's Studies, Old Dominion University, USA Ulrike Thoms, Institute For The History Of Medicine, Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany Kerry Wallach, Department Of German, Gettysburg College, USA