杏吧原创

For Health And Beauty by Mary Lynn Stewart, Johns Hopkins University Press,
拢29.50, ISBN 0801864836

COSMETICS may seem to be merely a matter of frivolous fashion, but their
history tells a different story, argues Mary Lynn Stewart, a historian at Simon
Fraser University. Science, not just commercial interests, lies behind all those
cleansing bars and creams we buy today. A century ago, French physicians and
hygienists vigorously advised women to use such products, as the modern notion
of cleanliness emerged. Louis Pasteur鈥檚 germ theory had transformed dirt into
the visible manifestation of the invisible鈥� the hidden bacterial agents of
disease.

The mass-circulation magazines unleashed a winning formula: cleanliness was
linked to comeliness and ultimately femininity. In advertisements and editorial
pages alike, attractive, desirable, 鈥渞eal鈥� women were portrayed as consumers of
鈥渉ealth and beauty鈥� products.

But women didn鈥檛 swallow all the propaganda, Stewart argues in For Health
and Beauty. Most notably, women resisted the call to have more babies. The
鈥減ro-natalist鈥� policies that led in the 1920s to a ban on abortion and
women-controlled contraception were a failure, Stewart muses. 鈥淥ther indications
of women鈥檚 resistance to the biomedical and biosocial agenda are found in health
guides written by women physicians who refused to reduce femininity to
fertility; they accepted, and in two cases, approved of, feminine sexual
desire,鈥� she reveals in her well-researched and entertaining text.