Pageants, Parlors, & Pretty Women: Race and Beauty in the 20th-Century South

(University of North Carolina Press) The pursuit of beauty in the South was linked to the region’s tumultuous racial divides, asserts Blain Roberts '96 in Pageants, Parlors, and Pretty Women: Race and Beauty in the 20th-Century South. The book examines the Jim Crow-era cosmetics industry and the way that black-owned beauty shops became important sites for the civil-rights movement. Roberts is an associate professor of history at California State University, Fresno.