Support H-Net | Buy Books Here | Help Support the NBN and NBN en Español on Patreon | Visit New Books Network en Español!
- African Studies
- African American Studies
- American Politics
- American Studies
- American South
- American West
- Asian American Studies
- Australian and New Zealand Studies
- British Studies
- Canadian Studies
- Caribbean Studies
- Central Asian Studies
- Chinese Studies
- East Asian Studies
- Eastern European Studies
- European Politics
- French Studies
- German Studies
- Iberian Studies
- India Studies
- Indian Ocean World
- Iranian Studies
- Irish Studies
- Israel Studies
- Italian Studies
- Japanese Studies
- Korean Studies
- Latino Studies
- Latin American Studies
- Mexican Studies
- Middle Eastern Studies
- Native American Studies
- Pacific Studies
- Polish Studies
- Russian and Eurasian Studies
- Southeast Asian Studies
- South Asian Studies
- Turkish Studies
- Ukrainian Studies
- Western European Studies
- World Affairs
- Animal Studies
- Anthropology
- Archaeology
- Business, Management, and Marketing
- Media
- Critical Theory
- Disability Studies
- Drugs, Addiction and Recovery
- Education
- Economics
- Finance
- Geography
- Gender Studies
- Genocide Studies
- Higher Education
- Human Rights
- Journalism
- Language
- Law
- LGBTQ+ Studies
- National Security
- Philanthropy
- Philosophy
- Policing, Incarceration, and Reform
- Political Science
- Politics & Polemics
- Public Policy
- Sex, Sexuality, and Sex Work
- Sociology
- Sound Studies
- Sports
- Urban Studies
- Big Ideas
- Celebration Studies
- Co-Authored
- Cover Story
- Historical Materialism
- History Ex Silo
- Interpretive Political and Social Science
- Invested Investor
- Landscape Architecture
- Late Antiquity
- Mormonism
- NBN Book of the Day
- NBN Seminar
- Postscript: Conversations on Politics and Political Science
- Practical History
- Preparing for Life After Grad School
- Psychology and Climate Change
- Syriac Studies
- The Chair: In The Room at the Fed
- New Books with Miranda Melcher
Apr 10, 2018
Consumptive Chic
A History of Beauty, Fashion, and Disease
Summary
In her new book, Consumptive Chic: A History of Beauty, Fashion, and Disease (Bloomsbury, 2017), Carolyn Day tracks the relationship between dress, appearance, and tuberculosis in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Blending the histories of medicine and fashion, she charts multiple and often contested understandings of consumption and its socio-cultural significance.
Day's focus on experiences of upper- and middle-class women highlights gendered critiques of fashionable activities that allegedly led to the disease: riding, dancing, "impractical" dress. Emerging alongside these criticisms was the belief that some sufferers acquired desirable characteristics of feminine beauty---what Day terms an "aesthetics of consumption"---via the incurable illness. Complemented by rich case studies and illustrations, Consumptive Chic reveals the entangled history of ill health and beauty, as eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century aesthetics took an especially lethal turn.
Carolyn Day is an Associate Professor of History at Furman University, where she teaches courses on modern European history, modern British history, and the history of medicine.
Jess Clark is an Assistant Professor of History at Brock University (St. Catharines, Ontario). She is currently writing a history of the beauty business in Victorian London.
Jess Clark is an Assistant Professor of History at Brock University (St. Catharines, Ontario). She is currently writing a history of the beauty business in Victorian London.
