NWSA Journal

Ulmer, Constance.
Beauty Matters, and: Hair Matters: Beauty, Power, & Black Women's Consciousness, and: The Face of Our Past: Images of Black Women from Colonial America to the Present (review)
NWSA Journal - Volume 13, Number 2, Summer 2001, pp. 196-200

Indiana University Press

Constance Ulmer - Beauty Matters, and: Hair Matters: Beauty, Power, & Black Women's Consciousness, and: The Face of Our Past: Images of Black Women from Colonial America to the Present (review) - NWSA Journal 13:2 NWSA Journal 13.2 (2001) 196-200 Book Review Beauty Matters Hair Matters: Beauty, Power, & Black Women's Consciousness Hair Matters: Beauty, Power, & Black Women's Consciousness The Face of Our Past: Images of Black Women from Colonial America to the Present Beauty Matters edited by Peg Zeglin Brand. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000, 368 pp., $45.00 hardcover. Hair Matters: Beauty, Power, & Black Women's Consciousness by Ingrid Banks. New York: New York University Press, 2000, 197 pp., $55.00 hardcover. The Face of Our Past: Images of Black Women from Colonial America to the Present edited by Kathleen Thompson and Hilary Mac Austin. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999, 258 pp., $35.00 hardcover. Women's struggle for identity, unfortunately, often continues to be associated with conditions of beauty. Young girls continue to learn, through reading traditional children's literature such as Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White, that prettiness often leads to success. These stories tout the theme of beauty as the key to happiness, making the prince, and not self-worth, the prize of every girl's quest. Although some current children's literature portrays the princess as a stronger character, such as Robert Munsch's The...