Dying to Be Beautiful: The Fight for Safe Cosmetics

by GWEN KAY

Overview

Dying to Be Beautiful tells the story of how cosmetics came to be regulated in early-20th-century America. In 1906, the Food and Drug Administration was given the power to control food and drugs. Not until 1938 were other products that went into or onto the body, including cosmetics, similarly regulated. The intervening years saw death by depilatory and blindness by mascara and a rise in consumer and grassroots political activism. This book examines who fought for regulation of these inherently feminine products and why it took so long for their goals to be achieved.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814251386
Publisher:	Ohio State University Press
Publication date:	02/28/2005
Series:	WOMEN & HEALTH C&S PERSPECTIVE
Edition description:	1
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

Table of Contents

	List of illustrations	ix
	Acknowledgments	xi
	Introduction	1
Chapter 1	"A victory of the women of this country"	9
Chapter 2	"The arts and crafts of the modern flapper"	30
Chapter 3	"Marring the fair face of nature"	54
Chapter 4	"Some protection to our health, our looks and our pocketbooks"	76
Chapter 5	"The big cosmetic houses aren't sorry that the regulation has come"	106
	Epilogue	124
	Notes	128
	Works cited	171
	Index	184