Beauty Culture: Male Readers and the Modern Victorian Woman

By the mid-19th century, beauty was a booming business in Victorian London. As the century progressed, standards of inner and outer beauty began to shift, reflecting women’s continued social progress. Magazines with male audiences commented on these changes in surprising ways, often depicting the ‘New Woman’ as a figure outside of traditional gender norms, and sometimes the joke was on the conservative male reader.

Furthermore, a backlash began against toxic beauty products and regimens, which had at the start of the century been heavily promoted in popular beauty manuals. Examining a range of sources, with particular focus on the serio-comic periodical ‘Judy’, this fascinating talk will explore the complexity of Victorian women’s relationship to beauty culture in London, and its burgeoning emancipatory potential.