Peddling a Distinguishable Female Form: Late Nineteenth-Century Advertising of Cosmetics Hair Products and Corsets in British Women's Magazines

This project examines advertisements for cosmetics, hair products, corsets, and various other mechanical and chemical body alteration devices to uncover an emphasis, manifested through the female body, on gendered differences. Beauty products accentuated feminine physical attributes in order to emphasize differences that were much subtler than the discourse on gender would suggest. In essence, to make the bodily difference closer to the differences the discourse on gender proclaimed. Primary source material includes visual and textual advertisements from women's periodicals from 1870 — 1900. Periodicals have been chosen for popularity in their respective time periods as well as for their varied audiences (moderate feminists, those desiring fashion advice, and readers interested in political and social reform). This project relies heavily on ads from Woman, The Women's Penny Paper, and Myra's Journal of Dress and Fashion with occasional ads from other periodicals as well. Secondary sources demonstrate an increasing attention to the female body as well as changes in the way that the body, both female and male, was conceptualized. This study particularly draws from the work of Thomas Laqueur who uses scientific drawings of human anatomy and writing concerned with the body and reproductive processes to identify a shift in how people thought about female and male bodies. A wide variety of scholars interested in the Victorians' use of beauty products are also consulted.