Day 118: Fun Fact Fridays! (Flappers, Makeup, & Mirrors)

Image found here.

"In the effort to look like the attractive women they saw in movies and magazines, American women in the 1920s put aside long-established objections to face makeup and began to purchase and use a wide range of cosmetics.  At first, face powders were the most popular; eventually, rouge, lipstick, and eyebrow pencil were added to the list of acceptable beauty aids.  Gadgets for curling eyelashes were also marketed in drugstores for the first time in the 1920s.

Image found here

By the middle of the decade, the American cosmetics industry was flourishing and its growth was unrelenting, largely because teenage girls, as well as mature women, were making up in a way that was associated with the 'flapper' ideal.  Sales of compacts (small, handheld mirrors with a compartment for powder) soared because they allowed women to scrutinize and 'reconstruct' the face almost anywhere, at a moment's notice."


This fun fact found on pg. 70 of The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls, by Joan Jacobs Brumberg. 


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