Morag Martin

In Selling Beauty: Cosmetics, Commerce, and French Society, 1750–1830, Dr. Morag Martin examines the history of make-up and fashion in French society, focusing “not only on the anecdotes of elite use and the admonitions of journalists and advice writers but also one a broad range of archival sources and marketing tools,” arguing that, “contrary to expectations and despite an onslaught of criticisms of artifice, the commerce of cosmetics expanded and prospered in the late eighteenth century, during the Revolutionary period, and into the nineteenth century, becoming, with the perfume industry, a key component in the world’s conception of frenchness” (pg. 2). Her work “investigates a breadth of products, from expensive luxury items, solely for the elite, to cheaper versions for broader commerce” (pg. 3). In addition to what the products demonstrate about the nature of social class and the consumer revolution, Martin examines their relationship to the construction of gender under different political regimes from the late-eighteenth through early-nineteenth centuries. She writes, “Men hoped that in redefining fashion they could discipline women’s uses of artifice and their roles in society. Eighteenth-century literature on natural beauty reinforced the feminine private sphere as the only respectable place for the newly simplified fashion. In contrast, men were to give up the trappings of fashion, leaving their wives and daughters to signify their financial and social success through their clothing and leisure” (pg. 6).

Describing cosmetics’ place in the consumer revolution, Martin writes, “Cosmetics made ideal populuxe consumer products because they could be manufactured without large expense, and their perishable nature meant constant demand… The growing demand for affordable luxuries, the decline of guild monopolies, and the ease with which cosmetics could be manufactured encouraged the development of a thriving market for fards and perfumes” (pg. 33). This thriving marketplace helped to give rise to early advertising campaigns as “sellers of creams, rouge, and powder were early pioneers whose efforts would help construct the commercial practices of a free-market economy after the Revolution” (pg. 52). These advertisements also shaped perceptions of gender. According to Martin, “Cosmetics advertisements… started to address men and women differently. Most advertisements did not specify which gender their products pertained to, but some made references to differences in men’s and women’s toilettes by noting exceptions in the possible applications of products that were already gendered by the reader” (pg. 69). Men’s fashion changed, following what J.C. Flügel called the “Great Masculine Renunciation,” in which “a new version of masculinity privileged simplicity of dress and, more important, a retreat from notions of male beauty. The new man was a man because of his rough features, not despite them” (pg. 83). Martin continues, “Though male fashions certainly moved away from thick makeup and primping, men continued to take part in exhibitionism. Men were very much part of the consumer market created in the eighteenth century and very much part of the marketing campaigns of sellers of cosmetics” (pg. 155). Men’s cosmetics in the late-eighteenth century primarily focused on hair products, however, as hair became emblematic of male virility.

Medical practitioners worked to counter products made of harmful ingredients, such as lead, inadvertently providing justification for women to reclaim beauty products in an age when society shunned artifice. Martin writes, “Distancing themselves from the severe criticisms of philosophes, playwrights, and poets, doctors gained a tenable middle position in which they could decry cosmetics for medical reasons while still proposing to make women’s lives more pleasant through their application. Rather than simply scaring or scolding their audience, doctors wooed female readers by offering them real solutions to everyday problems within a domestic setting… In the midst of public disapproval, this specialist knowledge gave women a means to reclaim beauty practices for themselves” (pg. 108). In this section, Martin demonstrates a Foucauldian argument as both male medical professionals and female patients negotiate their power relationships regarding the use of cosmetics.

Dr. Morag Martin’s work is a valuable market history and gender history that unpacks a product quintessentially associated with French identity, even into the modern day. Cultural historians and historians of Revolutionary France will find this essential reading as will anyone interesting in the history of cosmetics.… (meer)