an introduction
Well, I guess it was inevitable: I have a makeup blog with a pretentious literary-allusive title now. Elsewhere on the internet, I’m modernfoppery ; offline (or still online, given how often I procrastinate), I’m a 26-year-old grad student working toward a doctorate in English literature, with a focus on the 17th century. The phrase “auxiliary beauty” comes from one of the first English dictionaries: A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew , published in 1699 (and available in a modern edition as The First English Dictionary of Slang ). The author, the mysterious “B. E., Gent.,” defines “auxiliary beauty” as “Dress, Paint, Patches, setting of Eye-brows, and licking the Lipps with red.” Most descriptions of cosmetics at the time were as dismissive as this one, and I like the idea of reclaiming the phrase for an unabashedly pro-makeup project. I haven’t always been pro-makeup; in fact, I didn’t wear any makeup but concealer and clear lip balm until I