Ear­li­er this week Michèle Fitous­si wrote about her fas­ci­na­tion, her research mate­ri­als, and her favorite episodes from Hele­na Rubin­stein’s life. Her biog­ra­phy on Hele­na, Hele­na Rubin­stein: The Woman Who Invent­ed Beau­ty, is now avail­able. She has been blog­ging here all week for Jew­ish Book Coun­cil and MyJew­ish­Learn­ing.

Hele­na Rubin­stein’s career took off at a time when, at least in terms of beau­ty and hygiene, eman­ci­pa­tion was there for the tak­ing, and women were choos­ing to eman­ci­pate them­selves. Helena’s intu­ition, as well as lucky tim­ing, and of course her extra­or­di­nary tal­ent, cer­tain­ly helped her suc­ceed. She under­stood that beau­ty was seen as a ​‘new pow­er’, she man­aged to bring make-up out of the the­atres and broth­els for ​‘hon­est’ women to appro­pri­ate. She taught women how to look after them­selves, she democ­ra­tized access to beau­ty prod­ucts and antic­i­pat­ed the impor­tance of sci­ence and hygiene in the industry. 

For the eman­ci­pa­tion of women was not mere­ly the right to vote, work, and achieve finan­cial inde­pen­dence — fash­ion and beau­ty also played a great role. Thanks to Poiret and Chanel, women were free of restrain­ing corsets, allow­ing them the free­dom to move, take part in sports, walk, dri­ve, and ride hors­es just like men. Thanks to Hele­na Rubin­stein, they learnt to apply make­up or improve their skin – she had no inten­tion of cre­at­ing mere dolls, but rather women capa­ble of look­ing after them­selves. In 1912 in New York, the suf­fragettes protest­ing for the right to vote all wore bright red lip­stick; chal­leng­ing the soci­etal norms of the time by wear­ing ​‘taboo’ make-up. When Hele­na Rubin­stein arrived in the Unit­ed States three years lat­er, women were ready to fol­low her advice. Iron­i­cal­ly, she rarely used any skin creams her­self – but she had a beau­ti­ful com­plex­ion around which she built her brand.

So in a way, Hele­na played an impor­tant role in the women’s lib­er­a­tion move­ment, but per­haps uncon­scious­ly so, or in her own – non-polit­i­cal – way. I don’t believe this ruth­less busi­ness­woman and inge­nious entre­pre­neur was much of a feminist. 

Michèle Fitous­si was born in Tunisia to French par­ents, and has lived in Paris since the age of five. She worked as a jour­nal­ist at Elle mag­a­zine for years, inter­view­ing world lead­ers in areas as var­ied as pol­i­tics, human sci­ences, sports, lit­er­a­ture and the media. She is the author of screen­plays, fic­tion and non-fic­tion, includ­ing the inter­na­tion­al best­sellers Superwoman’s had Enough and The Pris­on­er. She also co-wrote Stolen Lives with Mali­ka Oufkir, which sold more than a mil­lion copies through­out the world and remained on the New York Times best-sell­er list for 25 weeks after being stamped as an ​“Oprah Book” by Oprah Win­frey. Her newest book, Hele­na Rubin­stein: The Woman Who Invent­ed Beau­ty, is now avail­able. Her forth­com­ing book about the 2008 ter­ror­ist attacks in Mum­bai will be pub­lished in France this September.

Relat­ed Content

• Jew­ish Fem­i­nists: Com­plex Iden­ti­ties and Activist Lives by Dina Pinsky
• The Thought­ful Dress­er: The Art of Adorn­ment, the Plea­sures of Shop­ping, and Why Clothes Mat­ter by Lin­da Grant
• Read­ing List: Wom­en’s His­to­ry Month