BEAUTY BOOKS

A BEAUTY book I really love is Karen Homer's Things a Woman Should Know About Beauty. I have a large collection of beauty books, and they are all lovely -- you will hear more about them in later posts!

I love Karen Homer's book because it is written in an accessible manner and it is full of useful advice. Plus, it doesn't obsess with weight, and doesn't equate extra pounds with a need to diet! The one problem with the book is that it uses only pictures of classic Hollywood beauties. But contemporary women are beautiful too! Bar Rafaeli, for instance, is the Goddess of Beauty reincarnated.

Beauty manuals have always existed -- Homer (not the above mentioned Karen Homer, but the Greek poet) contains beauty advice in the Iliad and Odyssey. However, they became especially popular from the 19th century onward, because more and more people were educated, and books themselves became cheaper.

I will write more about 19th century beauty manuals at a later post, but a favorite is Mary Haweis's The Art of Beauty. Haweis was a highly skilled and educated woman, who was even good at typography and book-binding!