Pageants, parlors, & pretty women : race and beauty in the twentieth-century South

Summary: From the South's pageant queens to the importance of beauty parlors to African American communities, it is easy to see the ways beauty is enmeshed in southern culture. But as Blain Roberts shows in this incisive work, the pursuit of beauty in the South was linked to the tumultuous racial divides of the region, where the Jim Crow-era cosmetics industry came of age selling the idea of makeup that emphasized whiteness, and where, in the 1950s and 1960s, black-owned beauty shops served as crucial sites of resistance for civil rights activists. In these times of strained relations in the South, beauty became a signifier of power and affluence while it reinforced racial strife. Roberts examines a range of beauty products, practices, and rituals--cosmetics, hairdressing, clothing, and beauty contests--in settings that range from tobacco farms of the Great Depression to 1950s and 1960s college campuses. In so doing, she uncovers the role of female beauty in the economic and cultural modernization of the South. By showing how battles over beauty came to a head during the civil rights movement, Roberts sheds new light on the tactics southerners used to resist and achieve desegregation. -- Publisher's website.

Item details

ISBN: 9781469614205
ISBN: 1469614200
ISBN: 9781469614212
ISBN: 1469614219
ISBN: 1469615576
ISBN: 9781469615578
ISBN: 9781469629865
ISBN: 1469629860
Physical Description: print
xii, 363 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Publisher: Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2014]

Contents / Notes

Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references (pages 323-348) and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	Introduction -- Making up white Southern womanhood : the democratization of the Southern lady -- Shop talk : ritual and space in the Southern black beauty parlor -- Homegrown royalty : white beauty contests in the rural South -- Thrones of their own : body and beauty contests among Southern black women -- Bodies politic : beauty and racial crisis in the civil rights era -- Conclusion.

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Library System: Library Branch Name Find your nearest library	Call Number / Copy Notes	Barcode	Shelving Location	Status
Newton County Library System: Covington Branch Library	323.1196 ROBERTS ( Send Text )	31036100017380	ADULT	Available
Newton County Library System: Porter Memorial Branch Library	323.1196 ROBERTS ( Send Text )	31036100017539	ADULT	Available

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Newton County Library System:
Covington Branch Library

323.1196 ROBERTS ( Send Text )

31036100017380

ADULT

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Newton County Library System:
Porter Memorial Branch Library