Beauty Design: Cosmetics as Will and Representation

Cosmetically-enhanced beauty is something that has existed for centuries. Over the course of the last century, however, a cosmetics industry has arisen that is worth millions. Its products claim to optimize visual appearance, to bestow inner and outer health and to delay aging, under a veneer of medical credibility and reliable results. The referential frame for cosmetics is constituted by cultural history and iconology, by semiotics and sociology, by psychology and rhetoric. Like fashion, it has called into being a linguistic system of considerable depth and complexity; one that draws its subtexts from futurology and history, from medicine and alchemy, from nostalgia and from heritage preservation. This book exposes the rhetorical system behind the promises of cosmetics in terms of the histories of cultures and of mentalities, analyzing the verbal/visual messages of selected examples.