Glamour: History, Women, Feminism - Hardcover

The book tells the story of glamour, exploring the changing meanings of the word, its relationship to femininity and fashion, and what glamour has meant to ordinary women. It is essentially a social history, focussed on twentieth century Britain, although there is considerable material on Hollywood cinema and the themes that it explores are of wide contemporary interest. It uses a rich variety of sources: social surveys, biographical and autobiographical material, film and women's magazines. It also draws on non literary sources in relation to the history of costume, perfume and fur. Whilst the approach is narrative and historical the book engages with two main sets of questions. The first is whether ideas about glamour have shown consistency through time or whether they have changed according to historical context. The second relates to the troubled relationship between feminism and glamour, asking whether women have been empowered or imprisoned by its dictates. In relation to the first set of questions, I argue that there have been recognisable continuities through history. Contemporary writers on style, advertisers and fashion journalists make regular reference to 'classic Hollywood glamour' as both a desirable commodity and 'the real thing'. But where in the early twentieth century glamour was associated with the cutting edge, with American cinema and with modernity, it is now bound up with images from the past, nostalgia and tradition. In contrast with some feminist concerns about glamour as oppressive, I show that historically, glamour can be seen as an expression of defiance and assertiveness on the part of women, albeit within the constraints of an unequal and male-dominated society. This book will explore some of the ways in which and the contexts in which glamour served as an expression of desire, an affirmation of the sexual self and a statement of entitlement to a share in the pleasures of affluence. The book is necessary because one can't make sense of contemporary discussions of glamour without understanding its history. The subject continues to be an extraordinarily vexed one amongst feminists of all age groups. There is a popular assumption - not always unfounded - that feminists are 'opposed' to glamour. Young women remain as troubled over questions of appearance and body image as they were when Naomi Wolf made such an impact with The Beauty Myth in 1990. This book disentangles many of the issues and arguments around femininity, appearance and power. It does this in a discursive and readable way, avoiding theory and jargon. Much of the material is entertaining and fascinating in its own right - the history of the 'makeover', for instance, and the references to perfume, cosmetics and fashions in fur.

Carol Dyhouse is a social historian with research interests in women's history. Her publications include Girls Growing Up in Late Victorian and Edwardian England (1981), Feminism and the Family in England,(1989), No Distinction of Sex? Women in British Universities, 1870-1939 (1995), and most recently Students: A Gendered History (2006). She is currently research professor in history at the University of Sussex.