Pageants, Parlors, and Pretty Women

“Roberts uncovers the toils and economic effects of feminine beauty in the South during the 1950s and '60s.” — Ebony

A Notable African-American Title — Publishers Weekly

“The good, the bad and the lovely.” — Chicago Tribune Printers Row Journal

“Roberts has chosen to look at many of the issues of the 20th century through the intimate world of women’s beauty regimens and the public world of beauty pageants.” — American Press

“Roberts’s compelling narrative challenges historians to integrate the pursuit of beauty in their examinations of race and politics in the modern South.” — The Southern Register

“The expression that ‘beauty is only skin deep’ is put to the test in this well-researched examination of women, race, and standards of attractiveness in the 20th-century US.” — CHOICE

“An important book of American social history and a fine addition to the literature on women of the South in the years between the institution of Jim Crow and its demise.” — H-Net Reviews

“A fresh and valuable contribution to a well-established body of scholarship on the history of modern beauty culture in the United States.” — Journal of American History

“We’ve needed Blain Roberts’s book for a very long time, and she abundantly delivers the goods—on southern beauty and on women’s beauty generally. Looking on both sides of the color line, Roberts sees the moral resonances of beauty, whose work was about power as well as appearance. A great book for oh so many reasons!” — Nell Irvin Painter, author of The History of White People and Sojourner Truth, A Life, A Symbol

“This book fills an important gap in the scholarship on southern women’s history. Meticulously researched, it is well grounded in a wide range of secondary sources and supported with evidence from a variety of primary sources including diaries and memoirs, print culture, corporate records, and even political speeches. Roberts demolished a lot of my erroneous assumptions about southern beauty culture. A fascinating and important work.” — Melissa Walker, Converse College