Once upon a time, there was Beauty - when one could imagine absolute perfection. However, the certainty of unchanging aesthetic standards gave way to the radical repositioning of the individual at the threshold of the modern world.
Here, the requirement is now for distinct beauties, all the more remarkable the more unique they are. The practices of grooming multiply and diversify: among others, makeup (where Baudelaire recognizes a way of 'inventing the self'), beauty care, cosmetic products, and surgical procedures, through which everyone dreams of reconstructing their personality.
The element of artifice reigns supreme. This journey from absolute beauty to the multiple versions of personalized beauty is traced by the book, always in relation to the changes in society, as there is no doubt that the rules of beauty depend on each era and its values.
From the face of the Mona Lisa to contemporary sylphs, it is not only the criteria of beauty that have changed. Georges Vigarello shows that the history of culture also shapes the bodies of women and men.
Appearance, which continues to distinguish individuals, simultaneously expresses the contrasts that simmer between social groups, generations, and lifestyles. A splendid or disturbing object of the mirror, beauty itself becomes a mirror of the societies that define it.
[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]
