"Face and Fashion" in Women According to Men

I’m currently researching my topic about English Renaissance Costume. I found an interesting book that another group (Women in the English Renaissance?) might be interested in reading. The book is called Women According to Men, by Suzanne W. Hull. In the preface, Hull writes that over “99 percent of all publications were by male authors” and there was a strong male bias against women (9). As the book’s title indicates, it presents women’s roles from the male bias, but such works are still valuable, as Hull explains: “men’s views molded society; their books help show what that society wanted from its women. Whether they present an accurate picture of the women is a difficult question” (9). Although the book is a secondary source, it has very useful and detailed bibliography which can serve as a good starting point for researching primary texts.

For this blog, I will be focusing on the chapter titled “Face and Fashion.” In this chapter, Hull examines the controversy between the moral and religious concerns of appearance and the need to maintain a fashionable and youthful appearance. Critics of the extravagance of the English court asserted that lavish costumes and excessive makeup altered the natural purpose of clothing in relation to the human body. For instance, John Bulwer wrote a book titled Anthropometamorphosis: Man Transformed, which asserted that the purpose of clothing was to cover nakedness, not to alter or glorify the body which God made according to His ideal. Other writers, such as Thomas Tuke in his book titled Discourse Against Painting and Tincturing of Women, believed that cosmetics were wrong because they altered natural appearances, especially the blush which indicates modesty:

It is not enough to be good, but she that is good must seem good; she that is chaste must seem chaste; she that is humble must seem humble; she that is modest must seem to be so and not plaster her face [so] that she cannot blush. (quoted in Hull 182)

I think Tuke’s observation about the connection to appearance and inner morality is key in understanding Renaissance fashion. Excessive amounts of time, energy, and money spent on maintaining appearances can, perhaps, indicate an inner moral depravity, a sense of self worship, or a need to disguise some inner flaw. But, from my post-modern perspective, I think Tuke’s quote is somewhat hypocritical since people can and did manipulate their outward appearance to try to maintain this appearance of goodness. For instance, women with black hair were considered to be lustful and there were recipes available which used sulphuric acid to change hair from black to brown (Hull 185). Also, Queen Elizabeth I was known for using a heavy layers of makeup to disguise facial scarring after she suffered from smallpox when she was 29 (Hull 181). Elizabeth I disguised many of her physical imperfections, but she also emphasized her other desirable traits. For instance, the queen was known to have a slight figure, and many people imitated Queen Elizabeth's fashion style by using corsets to reduce the size of their waists. 

Regardless of Tuke's assertion that outer appearance should reflect an internal morality, society assigned moral values to appearances – even natural appearances. For future reading, I think it would be interesting to focus on Queen Elizabeth's influence over the fashion of the aristocracy, and how English society reconciled these criticisms of extravagant fashion with their trend-setting queen. 

Here is the citation for this book in case you are interested. There are several other chapters concerning women’s role as wives, responsibility in raising children, and household duties.

Hull, Suzanne W. “Face and Fashion.” Women According to Men. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 1996. Print.