Eyeliner: A Cultural History

Hankir's book could have stayed at the level of beauty trivia—eyeliner recipes, ancient Egyptian kohl, celebrity makeup lore—but reviewers noted it does something more ambitious by treating the cosmetic as a lens onto power and survival. She reports from Chad, India, Iran, and elsewhere, finding eyeliner used as sun protection, as spiritual practice, and as a quiet act of defiance by women living under regimes that police their appearance. The book's real strength, according to critics, is refusing to flatten these uses into a single feminist thesis; instead it lets the specific, sometimes contradictory meanings of the practice sit side by side.