Dying to Be Beautiful: The Fight for Safe Cosmetics

Dying to Be Beautiful tells the story of how cosmetics came to be regulated in early-20th-century America. In 1906, the Food and Drug Administration was given the power to control food and drugs. Not until 1938 were other products that went into or onto the body, including cosmetics, similarly regulated. The intervening years saw death by depilatory and blindness by mascara and a rise in consumer and grassroots political activism. This book examines who fought for regulation of these inherently feminine products and why it took so long for their goals to be achieved.