Beauty Of Women In The 1920s Essay

Ms. Park
English III, Period 6
11 April 2017
1920s Women’s Makeup
In the 1920s, makeup played a vital role especially for women trying to recover from the fears and horrors of the war. After the recession, it lead to an increase of manufacturing new cosmetic products and brands such as Maybelline. As makeup made its debut to the world, stores were opening and slogans such as “try before you buy” just like Gordon Selfridge proclaimed women to get a sense of what products to use along with spreading the word to others if content with the amazing outcome. Face and complexion was considered by most as an important factor for representing beauty of an artificial face. Face powder was very essential because many women wanted to create a light, sandy

tone by using light pink, cream, white and even a green tint that would ultimately give them that artificial look. Just like powder, rouge was very essential in having the goal of an artificial face that women wanted to depict. The application of the rouge to the apples would give women a soft and flushed look to the face. Different types of rouge were used such as a variety of pink for a lighter face to an orange tint for a golden or tan skin tone. The typical look for women when it came to eyeshadow was a dark and smokey look to even out the lip color and the powder. A variety of browns were used to create the concept of a dark and smokey eye, but in fact colors such as purple or blue for the eye liner were also used particularly for parties to match their dresses. Around the the 1920s, mascara wasn’t used as much on women partly because it was a relatively new product, and that time was called “eyelash darkened” which would make the eye stand out and extended the lash to a long length. A few years later in 1923, the eyelash curler was invented to help give the eyelash a curl to make the eyes look bigger. In fact, Maybelline supplied a lot of eyelash products which ultimately became a huge and successful brand. Altogether, the eyebrows shaped the women’s look because the way they were shaped affected the outcome and overall appearance.

There are two ways women would do their eyebrows, the first was to pluck them thin or how much they wanted it to be and then fill them in with pencil to obtain a certain shape. The second way was to pluck or shave it completely off and then draw them in with eyebrow pencil. Natural brows were also a typical thing for women because it was considered fashionable to draw the ends beyond the natural brow and then slope them downward. Eyebrows were a main part of makeup because women tended to have thicker and fuller eyebrows than men which would not exceed many women’s standards in a feminine, artificial look. Lastly, for creating a perfect lip outlook, push-up tubes were used and were invented by Maurice Levy in 1915. Red was the typical lip shade that was used because it was one of many colors to enhance their face with pop color and to balance out their heavy eyeshadow look. Also, the most associated lip look in the 1920s was the cupid’s bow to create the upper lip in a shape of a heart along with applying lipstick on it’s outer edge for a rounded mouth. Furthermore, makeup was very essential in the 1920’s for women because it was a form of individual

expression as well as a form of therapy from after the horrors of the war.