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Author Roberts, Blain, author

Title Pageants, parlors, & pretty women : race and beauty in the twentieth-century South / Blain Roberts
Published Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2014]
©2014

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Description 1 online resource (xii, 363 pages)
Contents 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
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
Pageants, Parlors, and Pretty Women: Race and Beauty in the Twentieth-Century South
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 323-348) and index
Notes Online resource (HeinOnline, viewed August 3, 2021)
Subject Civil rights movements -- Southern States -- History -- 20th century
Race awareness -- Southern States -- History -- 20th century
African American women -- Southern States -- Social conditions -- 20th century
Black race -- Color -- Social aspects -- Southern States -- History -- 20th century
Human skin color -- Southern States -- Psychological aspects -- History -- 20th century
Cosmetics -- Social aspects -- Southern States -- History -- 20th century
Beauty, Personal -- Social aspects -- Southern States -- History -- 20th century
Beauty shops -- Social aspects -- Southern States -- History -- 20th century
Beauty contests -- Social aspects -- Southern States -- History -- 20th century
POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Political Freedom & Security -- Civil Rights.
POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Political Freedom & Security -- Human Rights.
HISTORY -- United States -- 20th Century.
African American women -- Social conditions
Beauty, Personal -- Social aspects
Beauty shops -- Social aspects
Black race -- Color -- Social aspects
Civil rights movements
Human skin color -- Psychological aspects
Race awareness
Race relations
SUBJECT Southern States -- Race relations -- History -- 20th century
Subject Southern States
Genre/Form Electronic books
History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781469615578
1469615576
9781469614212
1469614219
Other Titles Pageants, parlors, and pretty women