ADVICE TO BLONDES AND BRUNETTES
Six subjects are of special consideration to the blonde. She must
remember that her type has the most delicate of complexions. To
accentuate her blondness she should keep her hair as light as possible.
She should eat such food as will enrich her golden coloring. She should
avoid whatever tends to the accumulation of fat. She should guard
against the faded appearance that comes early to most blondes. She
should dress to emphasize her golden coloring.
While it is true that woman’s hair is her crowning glory, a blonde’s
hair is her aureole, her halo of beauty.
Half the time and attention she gives to her toilet should be given to
her hair. The blonde’s hair, as a rule, has a golden tint. This tint is
the keynote of her beauty, and should be enhanced in every possible way.
She may wash her hair as often as she likes with no fear of its fading.
The lighter it becomes the better. For her there need be no fear of
using carefully those aids in cleansing the hair, ammonia, borax or
washing soda. Each of these, if used often, tends to make the hair
several shades lighter--but in too large quantities it will make the
hair brittle.
Because it does not matter how light her hair becomes, the blonde may
wash her hair oftener than the brunette does. A shampoo in borax water
once or twice a week soon lightens the hair. One tablespoonful of borax
in a gallon of water is sufficient.
Two shampoos a week in water in which ammonia has been sprinkled soon
brings about a lightening of the hair. One gallon of water and half a
wineglass of ammonia is a good proportion.
Two shampoos a week in a gallon of warm water with a heaping
tablespoonful of washing soda in it is the speediest agent I know for
lightening the hair, excepting peroxide, which some blondes who do not
wish to actually bleach their hair use in small proportions in the
shampoo. One tablespoonful of peroxide of hydrogen in a gallon of water
is the usual proportion.
Every one expects light hair to be fluffy. Fluffiness is the
accompaniment of goldenness in hair, and the observer of beauty is
always disappointed if he sees fair hair smooth. Smoothness seems to
belong rather to dark hair. The blonde should so comb and brush her
hair that each hair is distinct and separate from the others. This
gives an aureole-like effect to her face, and wonderfully softens her
features.
The blonde knows that fair hair is expected to be fluffy. If it isn’t
she can make it so by drawing it into a loose mass after a shampoo and
tying it with a ribbon, letting it dry thus. If the hair is long it can
be tied again by another ribbon close to the ends, making it curve or
wave.
The blonde’s skin being finer and more delicate has a greater tendency
to wrinkle. Wrinkles come early to her because her skin is so delicate.
It is like rice paper, forming fine surface wrinkles as well as deeper
ones. For this reason her motto should be “Oil, oil, oil.”
The blonde’s complexion is comparable to that of a rose. It has a
superb bloom, but fades early. The withered rose petal is one of the
most pathetic sights in nature. It is a danger signal to the blonde,
saying sadly to her, “Guard well your complexion!”
The blonde should remember that the dry skin is the forerunner of
wrinkles, and literally keep her skin well oiled. Occasionally a
blonde, if stout, is troubled by a greasy skin. This old cosmetic has
corrected that fault:
Sulphate of zinc, 2 grains; compound tincture of lavender, 8 minims;
distilled water, 1 ounce.
This cream is of the soft sort that is especially adapted to a blonde’s
delicate complexion:
Oil of sweet almonds, ½ ounce; olive oil, ½ ounce; oil of poppies, ½
ounce; white wax, ½ ounce; spermaceti, ½ ounce. First melt the white
wax over a slow fire, pour in the other ingredients, and stir briskly
until they cool and reach a cream-like consistency.
For a skin that is chronically dry, I recommend the use of almond meal
instead of soap. It is not only cleansing, but injects into the pores
the needed oil. I also advise frequent use of this:
Almond oil, 2 ounces; extract of Italian pink, 12 drops.
Many blondes when they are young are afflicted with unbecoming flushing
of the skin. Sunburn and wind roughening are an affliction to the
owners of such complexions. For these the compounds containing a
generous amount of honey are healing and soothing. The following I have
always heard recommended as efficacious by many blonde friends:
Honey, 1 ounce; almond oil, 1 ounce; white wax, 1 ounce; spermaceti, 1
ounce.
Now and then a complexion rebels against glycerine. This is more liable
to be true of blondes, although I recall at this moment six at least
who use the following to tone down the redness when their skin has been
irritated:
Camphor water, 1 pint; glycerine, ½ ounce; powdered borax, ¼ ounce.
As her skin is more delicate, so the facial massage should be lighter
than that given the brunette. It should indeed be the new massage,
the patting, the raindrop sort of treatment, instead of the severe
treatment of the old régime.
Always with a view to keeping and enhancing the golden tints in hair
and skin, the blonde should be careful to eat such food as will feed
the pigment that produces the wheat-like hair and apple blossom skin.
I have before spoken of Mme. de Crequy, the French beauty, who was in
many respects a model to the other beauties of the court of France. Her
biographers said that Mme. de Crequy had the loveliest complexion ever
granted to woman. They said in the next line that she ate every day
thirty oranges and almost nothing else.
The orange is the best friend of the complexion among the fruits. It
clears the complexion marvelously, but it has besides the property
of holding much of the golden shade in solution. A blonde whom I
know tried the experiment of eating a half dozen oranges a day and
increasing the number to a dozen daily for three months. In that time
the change in her coloring was marvelously for the better. Her hair,
which had been a shade too pale, took on the rich yellow of cornsilk.
When she had quite convinced herself of the fact that oranges are the
food of beauty, and especially of blonde beauty, she was advised also
to eat many carrots. This she did in connection with the oranges for
six months. She ate carrots sliced and stewed in cream. She ate them in
soup. She ate them mashed and seasoned slightly with salt and pepper.
She even ate them baked. This she began doing in the early summer. By
the same time the next year her hair had deepened three shades and was
far richer. And her complexion was fresher, fairer and it harmonized
more perfectly with the golden lights in her hair.
The blonde, as a rule, must fight the tendency to accumulate flesh.
The man who first wrote “fair, fat and forty” was observant. He had
registered the conclusion that the woman who is fair is at forty more
than likely to be fat. And so she is. Recognizing this tendency of the
placid nature, which is usually an accompaniment of fair face and hair,
the blonde should begin to combat it at twenty. Better at eighteen.
She can prevent her waist and hips growing larger by deep massage. The
Japanese women never grow fat. Ask them why and they show you how they
pinch their hips to crush the tissues and keep the hips flat.
Your funny American dance, the cakewalk, is a great hip-reducer. That
backward motion, with the face turned upward and the feet lifted
prancingly, draws the tendons, solidifies the muscles and makes the
limbs compact.
To reduce the hips, with hands on hips bend forward, swaying the upper
body in a half-circle on a horizontal plane.
Stand erect and try to make the elbows meet in the back. This is
an excellent exercise to remove the superfluous fat or to prevent
superfluous fat forming upon the back.
To make the waist small and pliant stretch the arms high above the head
and bend them forward, describing a quarter circle.
To reduce the abdomen, bend forward until the palms touch the floor.
To avoid growing stoutness lie upon the back and raise the body slowly
to a sitting posture without bending the knees.
These exercises alone, begun early and persisted in, will keep back the
tide of fat that comes with the years to most blondes.
She should guard, I have said, against the early fading that is the
blighting tendency of her type. It is nature’s compensation, a revenge
nature seems to work at the behest of the jealous brunettes, that the
blonde who was so exquisite in youth should early lose the delicacy
of her skin and the brilliancy of her hair. But some blondes have
prevented this early fading, and what some blondes have done other
blondes may do. The cure in this instance is the preventive. The
delicate skin that has been well fed will not grow dry and wrinkled
early. The blonde who has made carrots and oranges her chief articles
of diet for many years, supplying the iron needed to replenish the rich
gold of her hair, will not early lose the luster of that hair.
The blonde’s critics say that she should wear gown, hat, shoes and
gloves to match, but that she should wear only one color. Perhaps this
is untrue, but I have noticed that many of them are disposed to heap
color upon color upon their costumes. Violet and green and mauve and
black I have seen in one combination. The blonde who wore it looked
cheap and common, and the glory of her hair was dulled by it. Had she
worn any one of the colors alone, been a symphony in violet, in mauve,
in green or in gold, she would have been ravishing. And the splendor of
her hair would have been a glory in burnished gold. But she diffused
her color effects by her strange costume. Blondes should always dress
for their hair.
A rude bachelor said that “blonde” had come to be a term of contempt
because there were so few natural ones. Scientists, too, say that her
type is decadent and will in the course of a few hundred centuries
disappear. But the blonde can enjoy herself for many generations before
that happens. And she may remember that the blonde races have been the
world rulers for many years.
The history of the evolution of the blonde shows that her origin was in
the north, but that she emigrated to the south and ruled the brunette
natives. Science gravely informs us that the blonde flourishes in the
moistest climates. This great racial fact may be applied to individual
cases. Certainly the blonde who wants to cherish her golden hair and
fair skin should not turn inland, but to the seashore.
If you are a brunette your glory is your eyes, your menace is your
liver, your besetting fault is a lack of cheerfulness.
As to your eyes first. Their color is in itself a guarantee of beauty.
There is no shade of brown eyes that is not beautiful, beginning with
the golden brown eyes, which the novelists delight to describe as tawny
but which I have named tiger color, through the red brown shades--that
to some imaginative ones suggest cruelty, to myself the brownish red
shades of claret--to the so-called “black” eyes, which are indeed not
black, for there are no genuinely black eyes. Place a bit of black
velvet beside the darkest eyes you ever saw and note how brown the eyes
look beside them.
They run the gamut of beauty. Brown eyes, the shade of the tobacco
leaf, Fierenzuola, the Florentine authority on beauty, said are the
loveliest eyes in the world. Certainly they are the eyes of sentiment,
and sentiment is accepted even in America, though it has not here the
importance in individual and national life that it has in Europe.
I have read somewhere that brown eyes ask for love and get it. The eyes
of the brunette should shine starlike out of a creamy white face as
stars peep through the breaks in a cloud.
The eyes being her glory, the wise brunette takes the best possible
care of them. To care well for them she should care well for their
surroundings. Eyes are of diminished loveliness indeed if the eyelashes
and eyebrows be ill kept. The eyelashes should be thick and soft as
silk. They should be long and their loveliness is still greater if they
happen to be curly. To keep them in best condition there should be no
eyestrain. Reading by a bad light, reading on a moving vehicle, reading
in bed, looking at too great distances, or looking too continuously at
too bright objects in the sun-light--as at an unshaded lake at high
noon or a bit of glass in a high light, continuing at any task after
the muscles of the eyes ache, cause eyestrain, and eyestrain causes
inflammation of the eye itself, of the linings of the eyelids and of
the rims of the eyelids.
Whatever inflames the lining of the eyes inflames the edges of the
lids, and from inflamed eyelids the eyelashes fall with alarming
swiftness.
Trimming the ends of the eyelashes once in six weeks I find makes them
grow longer and thicker. I always have this done by a young person,
because a young person’s hand is firmer, and there must be no trembling
of the hand that works in the region of the sensitive eye. Use one of
the tiny brushes made for eyebrows and eyelashes. Use it every morning
and evening. Brush the eyelashes lightly with a downward stroke to make
them long, upward to make them curly. Both serve the chief purpose in
the culture of eyelashes, which is to keep them clean. You are most
careful to keep your velvet gown free from dust. Be careful also of
your eyelashes, which are more vitally important to your beauty.
For bathing the eyes to relieve them of inflammation and so to
strengthen the eyelashes use this preparation:
Distilled water, 1 pint; cornflowers, 30 grams. Crush the cornflowers
in a mortar. Steep them in the water for a day--that is, for
twenty-four hours. Strain the liquor through a piece of fine cloth,
such as cheesecloth. Heat in a porcelain pan over a moderate fire. Cool
and tightly cork. Bathe the eyes night and morning from an eyecup or
with an eyedropper.
Spanish women whose eyelashes have faded often apply this mixture to
make them darker:
Water, 300 grams; sulphate of iron, 10 grams; gall nuts, 50 grams.
Boil the nuts in the water for a half hour. Strain through cheesecloth
or muslin. Add the sulphate of iron. Boil again until the quantity of
the liquor is reduced one third. Apply at the root of the eyelashes,
being careful not to let any of the mixture touch the eye. The best
means of applying it is with a sable pencil. This formula may also be
used for the eyebrows.
Brush the eyebrows night and morning, training them to a high arch. The
expression of the face is more piquant if the eyebrows be high.
The brunette, even more than the blonde, should develop by every proper
means the brilliancy of her eyes, for while the brunette’s chief glory
is her eyes, that of the blonde is her hair.
She should, besides taking all the rest she needs--even more than
she needs so that she will be sure to have enough--use many cooling
lotions. The boracic acid water which I have recommended for the blonde
I forbid to the brunette, because it often leaves a sediment which
clings to the eyelashes and shows white as hoar frost on the black
lashes of the brunette. But for her there is the refreshing eyebath of
cool, weak tea, or of this, applied fairly warm:
Rose water, 1 gill; witch hazel, 1 gill.
If the eyes ache persistently, retire to a dark room, lie down and
place upon the eyes some cool tea leaves, secured there by the useful
eye bandage or bandalette to which I have referred in a previous
chapter.
If crow’s-feet appear prematurely about her eyes she should apply
lanolin, patting it in thoroughly. Lanolin is the base of most of the
skin foods and has no equal, to my present knowledge, as a builder of
flesh tissues.
The blonde’s complexion fades early because her skin is extraordinarily
thin and fine. The brunette’s, as a rule, is the reverse. A fine almond
meal is a good substitute for soap for the blonde’s complexion.
The brunette, because her skin is thicker, and has a tendency to an
oily appearance, could to her benefit use once a day a toilet soap made
as follows:
White castile soap, 300 grams; spermaceti, 20 grams; oxgall, 10 grams;
honey, 20 grams; essence of rosemary, 10 grams; essential oil of
oranges, 15 grams; oil of lemon, 20 grams; alcohol, 15 grams; attar of
roses, 2 drops.
Melt the spermaceti and the shaven soap in a bain marie. Add the other
ingredients one by one, mixing thoroughly after each addition. Pour
into molds.
If the brunette finds that the pure, cold creams contain so much oil
and lanolin that they encourage the natural oil in her skin, she can
feed her skin with slighter nourishment, as for instance some of the
cucumber lotions that have from time to time appeared in the articles
I have written. This can be prepared at home. Wash and wipe carefully
six large cucumbers; leave the rind on and cut the cucumber into inch
square cubes. Fill one saucepan with water, and into a small one place
twelve ounces of almond oil. Drop the pieces of cucumber into the oil
and heat until they reach the boiling point. When it has reached that
point put it at the back of the stove and let it simmer for three or
four hours. Strain through cheesecloth, crushing out of the cucumbers
as much juice as possible. Stir in while it cools four ounces of
benzoin. Keep the liquid in a jar in a cool place.
I had not thought there was a brunette who did not know that when she
dabs powder on her face in the evening she should choose not white but
Rachel, the brunette shade which has a tint of yellow in it. But I have
seen brunettes go forth to conquest with their face so white as to make
them seem ghastly and repulsive.
Some of my blonde friends in Paris were washing their hair every other
week in light ale. They thought this was a tonic for the scalp, and
that it made the hair light. My brunette friends, on the contrary, use
diluted claret:
Claret, 1 pint; water, 1 pint.
They believe that this helps to keep their hair dark. Prof. Jocquet,
my hair specialist in Paris--and by the way there is none better
anywhere--cleansed my scalp last summer in lemon juice.
Juice of two lemons; almond oil, 5 drops.
It is Prof. Jocquet’s interesting theory that oil applied directly to
the scalp causes the pores to open and disgorge the hairs.
The brunette should look, for a model for her hair, to the luster of
black satin. It seems to be the scheme of nature that the brunette
should have straight, shiny hair, as it is that the blonde should have
crisp, curling hair. Often individuals stray from this plan, but there
is no doubt that the plan exists.
I have said that the menace to her brunette beauty is the liver. I
repeat it. In the brunette there is always, as an accompaniment of dark
pigment, a torpidly inclined liver. That lazy liver, if permitted, will
make her complexion muddy, her eyes dull, her movements sluggish. She
must stir up this languid organ, make it perform its functions. As the
blonde must fear an excess of fat, so the brunette has reason to fear
an excess of bile. She should eat such juicy, acid fruit, as cherries,
strawberries and grapes, and in the water she drinks it is well to add
the juice of half a lemon to every glass of water.
The brunette should regard the lemon as her friend. It is a tonic for
her stomach and her scalp. Half a lemon rubbed well upon the scalp
cleanses it.
Her temperamental tendency is toward “the blues.” A blonde is more
sanguine than a brunette. The brunette will correct her brown view of
life by the same exercise and diet that goads the liver into activity.