Anything which has to do with personal appearance must be handled with
great tact, for the adolescent girl is sensitive and she resents
direct criticism. But on the other hand she accepts eagerly anything
which promises to help her look well. If a teacher does not feel equal
to the task of assisting the girl to make the best of her physical
side she can find some one to help her. I know of one class of girls
in their teens who will never forget the talk given by a bright,
attractive, clever woman at the monthly social, on “Tales Told by
Belts,” and not a girl in the Girls’ Club, I know, ever forgot the
talk on “Sometimes the _Head_ Rules and Sometimes the _Feet_.” More
girls than usual wore rubbers the next rainy day, and some high heels
disappeared.
Perhaps one of the most helpful of the little incidental ways by which
the Sunday-school teachers may help is through praise. I have in mind
now a girl of sixteen who usually selected her own clothes, and seemed
to have a talent for putting together the wrong colors. One spring,
she, in some way, was persuaded by another girl to have her coat,
dress and hat all in browns that harmonized. One can hardly imagine
the change it made in the girl. She realized it. That Sunday in the
hall, I told her very quietly that she looked “dear,” that she must
never wear anything except soft colors that harmonized; that I loved
to look at her. She showed her pleasure. The next January she asked me
one night if I thought dark blue would be all right for her new suit
if she got “everything to match.”
No one can associate sympathetically with the girl in her teens week
after week and not be concerned about her physical welfare. There are
so many pale, anemic, tired girls that move one’s heart. Some work too
hard. Many live under unhygienic conditions. Many can not stand the
pressure and rush of school and social life. Great numbers suffer from
improper food, and many more because they do not get enough sleep.
Almost every Sunday I hear some girl say she “went somewhere every
night last week.” This mania for “going” seizes so many of our girls
just when they need rest and natural pleasures, the great
out-of-doors, and early hours of retiring.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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