In Style and Status, Susannah Walker examines twentieth-century commercial beauty culture in terms of race and gender. She demonstrates that while black women's beauty culture often mirrored that of white women in important ways, it remained distinctive because it explicitly articulated racial politics in the United States.

African American women confronted daily the tension between the idea that beautifying themselves according to modern standards enhanced their success and the idea that doing so meant capitulating to a white beauty ideal that excluded and denigrated them. That confrontation not only reflected race and gender politics, but it helped fuel the struggle for black equality during the 1960s and 1970s. Walker examines the role of African American consumer culture and draws connections between black women's racial identity, African American notions of femininity, and social and political consciousness.

Susannah Walker is assistant professor of history at Virginia Wesleyan College.

Reviews:

"An extraordinary contribution to research on African American beauty culture... one of the best historical accounts of African American beauty culture to date."--Ingrid Banks, author of Hair Matters: Beauty, Power, and Black Women's Consciousness

"A pioneering achievement in chronicling the history of African American beauty culture. . . . Walker . . . explores the shifting and contested notions of what beauty meant for black women in the context of African American social, political, and economical history."--Business History Review

"Well researched and thoughtfully executed. . . . Walker's new book...offers an excellent history of black beauty culture in the United States."--Journal of Southern History

"Walker presents an intriguing look at how even the most seemingly inconsequential aspects of black life had social and political meaning."--Southern Historian