American Beauty

New York: Alfred A. Knopf; A Borzoi Book, 1983. Near fine. Tight, clean copy. Age toning. Stated First Edition. Dust jacket, with light shelfwear, protected in a mylar cover. "Drawing on memoirs, etiquette books, contemporary novels, and popular histories of the musical and theatrical stage, Lois W. Banner chronicles how women looked (and how they felt about how they looked) and how they wanted to look . . . Here are the changing vogues ... American clothes as a revelation of sexual attitudes . . . the shifting models of American beauty ... illustrated with 16 pages of photographs." - Publisher. CONTENTS: The fashionables; Beauty as business: the early development of the commercial beauty culture; The ideal woman: the steel-engraving lady; The underside of fashion; The feminist challenge and fashion's response; The voluptuous woman: from Bouguereau to the British blondes; The voluptuous woman in eclipse: Lillian Russell, Lillie Langtry, and the advance of naturalness; The Gibson girl; The new order; The culture of beauty in the early twentieth century; Men; The pursuit of beauty as woman's role: the beauty contest, 1800-1921; The history of women and beauty since 1921.. 1st. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. 8vo.