Recipes for Men: Manufacturing Makeup and the Politics of Production in 1910s China.

In the first decade of Republican China (1911-49), masculinity was explored in writings on how to manufacture makeup that appeared in women's magazines. Male authors and editors of these writings--some of whom were connoisseurs of technology, some of whom were would-be manufacturers--appropriated the tropes of the domestic and feminine to elevate hands-on work and explore industry and manufacturing as legitimate masculine pursuits. Tapping into time-honored discourses of virtuous productivity in the inner chambers and employing practices of appropriating the woman's voice to promote unorthodox sentiment, these recipes "feminized" production to valorize a new masculine agenda, which included chemistry and manufacturing, for building a new China.