The Body Project

I recommend to anyone interested in finding out more about body image and the history to pick up "The Body Project" by Joan Jacobs Brumberg. This book goes into the history of acne, body image, menstruation and how these issues have been addressed over the past and present centuries.

The most interesting section to me was the chapter on acne and skin care. Girls you to go to such extremes back in the 1800 and 1900s just to get rid of one pimple. It goes to show that although many of us struggle with acne in today's world, it is much easier to find treatment with all the advances in technology and readily available over-the-counter treatments.

The following is an excerpt from Brumberg's book:
"...as the story of my own mother and grandmother reveals. My mother, Frances Storck, also the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants, grew up in New Rochelle, a suburb of New York City. In 1929, at age seventeen, she began to travel by train once a week to see Dr. Frank Combes, a well-known dermatologist at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan.[...]
My grandfather was a busy tailor who catered to New Rochelle's wealthiest families, but the Storcks felt they did not have the means to send a daughter to college. The family nevertheless found resources to invest in Frances's skin. Instead of college tuition, they paid for three months of the most sophisticated dermatology (i.e., Roentgen rays), which, in 1929, was no small matter."