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Author: Nicholson, Virginia

Social & cultural history

Published on 3 April 2025 by Little, Brown Book Group (Virago Press Ltd) in the United Kingdom.

Paperback | 528 pages, 20 photos/images
198 x 127 x 37 | 418g

‘Sits you at the dressing table of history: a place of dreams, doubts, self-harm and hopes’ -Sunday TimesAt the heart of this history is the female body. The century-span between the crinoline and the bikini witnessed more mutations in the ideal western woman’s body shape than at any other period. In this richly detailed account, Virginia Nicholson, described as ‘one of the great social historians of our time…’ (Amanda Foreman) and a truly brilliant researcher has produced a most remarkable social history revealing the power, the pain and the pleasure involved in adorning the female body. She asks how custom, colour, class and sex fit into the picture, and shrewdly charts how the advances made by feminism collided with the changing shape of desirability. Full of surprising facts – the feminist plastic surgeon, the radioactive corset – alongside stories of the ‘New Women’ who discovered freedom by bobbing their hair, those who were the early adopters of trousers, and early Black beauty entrepreneurs, this book chronicles the codes, the contradictions, the lies and the highs of beauty. Virginia Nicholson shows how the pursuit of beauty can be oppressive but also a way of negotiating the world and that adornment can be a deep pleasure. It’s complicated!`This is a fascinating book: funny, unexpected, forgiving, political, personal, glamorous and yes, quietly, angry. Read it for the amazing stories; stay for the self-knowledge. Or the Revolution’ -Louisa Young, Prospect