title: Peculiar Beauty: Three Centuries of Charmingly Absurd Advice
author: Bonnie Downing
description: This compilation of personal beauty advice dating from the late 1700s to today, though entertaining, fails to amount to anything greater than its superficial parts. Editor Downing gleans random bits from years of tracking what she calls an "underappreciated genre" and packages them into short chapters with witty titles like "Meat, Grease, and Booze" and "Near Death Experiences." In a slim introduction, she writes, "I hope you'll laugh out loud when you read suggestions to wash your hair in gasoline, or to add spinach leaves to the bathbut really, is any of it stranger than Botox?" From inspirational writing by familiar beauty icons like Elizabeth Taylor ("If you think a picture of me as Miss Lard will inspire you, go ahead and put it on your refrigerator") to vintage avowals by lesser-knowns ("We might as well admit there's a dash of hussy in all ladies"), readers are bombarded with the timeless notion that a woman's goal should be to look her best at all times and under all circumstances. But with few insightful cultural observations or historical explanations (one sidebar notes that the "raw food" fad dates to the 1800s; another tells the origin of Vaseline), this assemblage is little more than amusingexcept when it's just plain disturbing. Photos. <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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  Dedication
  
  
  For Camille
  
  
  
  
  
  You are above and beyond a mere niece.
  
  
  
  
  
  Your never-ending enthusiasm and support are precious to me as are you,
  
  
  
  
  
  even though you still owe me a bowl of cereal.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 1
  
  
  Inveraray, Scotland
  
  
  
  
  
  Present Day
  
  
  “I’m no’ certain I should let ye go in there, Vi.” Aila Marshall pulled her
  car to a stop in front of a tidy cottage of white-washed stucco and shot her
  companion a skeptical grimace. “I promised Brontë I’d keep ye out of trouble.”
  
  “What kind of trouble can I get into at a wake?” Violet’s unusual blueish-
  lavender eyes twinkled with humor.
  
  “A wake? With that racket? Until I see a body, I’m going to assume we’re going
  to a rave.”
  
  Saying such a thing in reference to an eighty-plus-year-old lady might seem
  odd, but if living with Vi had taught Aila anything, it was that Violet Graham
  might act the frail, elderly grandmother, but she didn’t fool Aila. She was
  more trouble than a recal