The Acceptance of Makeup
Beauty a Duty, by Susanna Cocroft, describes the best practices for young women of the time to follow in order to be considered beautiful. Cocroft wrote the book in 1915 and promotes the idea that a cultivation of beauty is “a duty each one owes to self.”[1] Unlike the book’s predecessors that endorsed inner beauty over attractiveness, Beauty a Duty encourages women to cultivate their features to become as alluring as possible.[2] While the book does promote the use of makeup to enhance a woman's features, it also warns women against the use of whitening creams because they contain mercury and other minerals that can be harmful to the body.[3] As women began to obtain more rights, they became more aware of their looks and began wearing makeup while doing everyday activities outside of the house. [4] While society looked down upon this at first, overtime it gradually became more accepted into society. Beauty a Duty is an example of this because it encourages women to wear makeup.
Beauty a Duty reflects the changing roles of women in the early nineteenth century and its author, Susanna Cocroft, was one of the women who embraced the new opportunities available to women. Cocroft was an activist who believed that a healthy body was a key component to beauty.[5] Travelling around the country, Cocroft convinced women that they should perform chores themselves instead of hiring others. This way they could get physical exercise and obtain beauty standards. Ahead of her time, Cocroft advocated for women to exercise and was a key person in revolutionizing the physical education industry.[6] Her beliefs are reflected throughout the book as she advises women on what to eat and gives examples of exercises that can be done to stay in shape. As the definition of ideal beauty and the methods used to obtain it began to shift in the early nineteenth century, the physical wellbeing became incorporated into the standard. Through her work as an activist, Cocroft was a leading figure in encouraging women to obtain the ideal figure through regular exercise.
[1] Susanna Cocroft, Beauty a Duty (Chicago: Rand McNally & Company, 1915), 6.
[2] Ibid, 5.
[3] Ibid, 379.
[4] Kathy Peiss, Hope in a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), 48.
[5] “Susanna Cocroft,” Ramsey Library at UNC, November 20, 2016, http://toto.lib.unca.edu/findingaids/mss/biltmore_industries/05_political/bi_05_cocroft_susanna/default_cocroft.htm
[6] Helen Zoe Veit. "The Triumph of the Will: The Progressive Body and the Thin Ideal," Modern Food, Moral Food: Self-Control, Science, and the Rise of Modern American Eating in the Early Twentieth Century (2013): 157.