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Between the Harlem Renaissance and the end of World War II, a discourse that privileged a representative ideal of brown beauty womanhood emerged as one expression of race, class, and women's status in the modern nation. This discourse on brown beauty accrued great cultural currency across the interwar years as it appeared in diverse and multiple forms. Studying artwork and photography; commercial and consumer-oriented advertising; and literature, poetry, and sociological works, this text analyzes African American print culture with a central interest in women's social history. It explores the diffuse ways that brownness impinged on socially mobile New Negro women in the urban environment during the interwar years and shows how the discourse was constructed as a self-regulating guide directed at an aspiring middle class.

African American women --- Beauty, Personal --- Beauty --- Complexion --- Grooming, Personal --- Grooming for women --- Personal beauty --- Personal grooming --- Toilet (Grooming) --- Hygiene --- Beauty culture --- Beauty shops --- Cosmetics --- Afro-American women --- Women, African American --- Women, Negro --- Women --- Race identity --- Social conditions --- Social aspects --- African American literature. --- African American womanhood. --- African American women. --- African American youth. --- Brown v Board of Education. --- Charles H Parrish. --- Charles S Johnson. --- Cold War politics. --- Dark Princess A Romance. --- Elise Johnson McDougald. --- Franklin E Frazier. --- Great Depression. --- Harlem Renaissance fiction. --- Harlem educator. --- New Negro woman. --- New Negro. --- The Crisis. --- W E B Du Bois. --- WWII. --- black beauty ideals. --- black middle class. --- brown skin beauty ideals. --- brown skin models. --- brown-skin mulatta. --- consumer advertising. --- consumption. --- cosmetics. --- gender politics. --- interwar years. --- literary journals. --- middle class. --- mixed race. --- new woman. --- print culture. --- race concept. --- racial liberals. --- transnational activism. --- urbanization and race. --- woman’s era. --- women's poetry.