Rachel Lynn Geiger
December 13, 1996
AMST 205 Sec. 0201
Project 3

"You, too can become bewitching, entrancing, glamorous, win favor with the opposite sex if you will only use Dolly Dollison's Cold Cream and Powder. Convince your self--send away for a free sample--You have just heard the famous exiled Russian Princess NEVVA-BORN who spoke on Dolly Dollison Cream and Powder and What It Can Do for You--10 a.m. Station XXXX".

Since time immemorial--from the Egyptian queens down thru the centuries to the high school girl of today, BEAUTY AIDS have been an important item in the life of the fair sex. Long before science penetrated ignorance, long before radio waves were dreamt of and the technique of salesmanship was perfected, women massaged their bodies with oils, and used vegetable stains in much the same way and for the same reasons that we use rouge and lipstick. ¹

Bertha Maryn, the author of the "Mrs. Gullible" column in the Greenbelt Cooperator, Greenbelt's weekly newspaper during the late 1930's, expressed the ideology behind the use of makeup best. In 1938, the first year of the Greenbelt Cooperative's existence, women were as enthralled as ever with their appearances and the products that would give them "just the right look."²

Women remember their mothers putting on makeup, doing their hair, reading magazines for beauty tips and scanning the paper for advertisements. The women of Greenbelt had an additional consumer "watch dog" looking out for them as well, the Consumers Discussion Group, organized through the "Mrs. Greenbelt" section of the Greenbelt Cooperator, even formed a task force to discover harmful products and thrifty alternatives for expensive cosmetics and skin-care items.³