The Woman Beautiful; or, The Art of Beauty CultureJameson, Helen Follett
Science
The Woman Beautiful; or, The Art of Beauty Culture
Jameson, Helen Follett
Beauty, Personal
The bloom of opening flowers, unsullied beauty,
Softness and sweetest innocence she wears,
And looks like Nature in the world's first Spring.
--_Rowe._
Bad complexions cause more heartaches than crushed ambitions and cases
of sudden poverty. The reason is plain. Ordinary troubles roll away
from the mind of a cheery, energetic woman like water from a duck's
back, but beauty worries--well! they have the most amazingly insistent
way of sticking to one. You may say you won't think of them, but you do
just the same.
It was always thus, and thus it always will be.
Diogenes searched untiringly for an honest man--so they say. Woman,
bless her dear, ambitious heart, seeks with unabating energy the ways
and means of becoming beautiful.
After all, they're not so hard to find when once the secret of it is
known. Like the keys and things rattling about in her undiscoverable
pocket, they're right with her. If she will but stop her fretting for a
moment, sit down and think, then gird on her armor and begin the
task--why, that's all that's needed.
There are three great rules for beauty. The first is diet, the second
bathing, and the third exercise. All can be combined in the one word
health. But, alas! how few of us have come into the understanding of
correct living! It is woman's impulse--so I have found--to buy a jar of
cream and expect a miracle to be worked on a bad complexion in one
brief night. How absurd, when the cause of the worry may be a bad
digestion, impure blood or general lack of vitality! One might just as
well expect a corn plaster to cure a bad case of pneumonia, or an eye
lotion to remedy locomotor ataxia. The cream may struggle bravely and
heal the little eruptions for a day or so, but how can it possibly
effect a permanent cure when the cause flourishes like a blizzard at
Medicine Hat or a steam radiator in the first warm days of April?
Cold cream, pure powders and certain harmless face washes are godsends
to womankind, but they can't do everything! They have their
limitations, just like any other good thing. You may have a perfect
paragon of a kitchen lady, whose angel food is more heavenly than
frapped snowflakes, but you can't really expect her to build you a
four-story house with little dofunnies on the cupolas. Of course not.
Angel cake is her limit! And that's the way with those lovely liquids
and things on your pretty spindle-legged dressing table. They can do a
good deal in the beautifying line, but they can't do everything. Give
them the help of perfect health and scrupulous cleanliness of the skin,
and lo! what wonders they will work!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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