Does glamour empower women, or turn them into objects?

Parts of Carol Dyhouse article for the Gueardian. For full version click here.

Domestically oriented magazines tended to avoid using the word glamour, which was becoming tarnished by its growing associations with cheesecake photography, pin-up nudes, or scantily dressed models in soft-porn magazines. Many in middle-class England looked askance at the bosom-flaunting antics of Diana Dors or Sabrina, oozing disapproval of "good-time girls" who might be dismissed as "no better than they looked" or "all fur coat and no knickers". Young ladies were not supposed to draw attention to themselves, and what was glamour about if not self-assertion? "Don't make yourself look cheap" was the advice given by many a mother to a daughter bent on cosmetic makeover at the end of the 1950s.

In the 1960s, with the cult of youth, dolly birds, duffle coats and Carnaby Street, the signs and symbols of what was now regarded as old-fashioned glamour – red lips, ample curves, rich furs and complex, musky perfumes – were discarded by the young as outdated, or worse, as suggestive of "kept woman" status.

(....)It is important to remember that women practise glamour, they are not simply the object of the male gaze. And, historically, glamorous women were just as likely to be seen as dangerous to men as victims themselves. Glamour can represent self-assertion, sexual confidence, playfulness, pleasure and delight. But in the end, nothing empowers women so much as a good education and a well-paid job.

Carol Dyhouse is a research professor at the University of Sussex. Her new book, Glamour: Women, History, Feminism, is published by Zed Books