A panoramic social history that chronicles the quest for beauty in all its contradictions—and how it affects the female body.

"Women have been fat or slim, hyperthyroid or splenetic, sallow or pink-cheeked, slouched or erect, according to the prevalent notions of beauty." Cecil Beaton, The Glass of Fashion

Who decides what is fashionable? What clothes we wear, what hairstyles we create, what colour lipstick we adore, what body shape is 'all the rage’. The story of female adornment from 1860- 1960 is intriguingly unbuttoned in this glorious social history. Virginia Nicholson has long been fascinated by the way we women present ourselves – or are encouraged to present ourselves – to the world.

In this book we learn about rational dress, suffragettes’ hats, the Marcel wave, the Gibson Girls, corsets and the banana skirt. At the centre of this story is the female body, in all its diversity – fat, thin, short, tall, brown, white, black, pink, smooth, hairy, wrinkly, youthful, crooked or symmetrical; and – relevant as ever in this context – the vexed issues of body image and bodily autonomy. We may even find ourselves wondering, whose body is it? In the hundred years this book charts, the western world saw the rapid introduction of new technologies like photography, film and eventually television, which (for better and worse) thrust women—and female imagery—out of the private and into the public gaze.