Facing Beauty: Painted Women and Cosmetic Art by Professor Aileen Ribeiro

'Facing Beauty' by Aileen Ribeiro © Yale University Press

Throughout the history of the Western world, countless attempts have been made to define beauty in art and life, especially with regard to women’s bodies and faces. Facing Beauty examines concepts of female beauty in terms of the ideal and the real, investigating paradigms of beauty as represented in art and literature and how beauty has been enhanced by cosmetics and hairstyles.