Modern Screen (Dec 1931 - Nov 1932 (assorted issues))

BEAUTY ADVICE Write to Mary Biddle about your own beauty problems. She will be glad to help you. However, owing to the fact that she receives so many letters, will you be good enough to ask only one question per letter? Address Mary Biddle, MODERN SCREEN, 100 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. Enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope, please Would any of us bewail gray hair if we could look as lovely as Norma Shearer? It's a wig, of course. She wears it in the later sequences of "Strange Interlude" I LIKE to think that there are four ages of beauty and that women can be beautiful through all these ages. There are the 'teens, for example and the twenties and the thirties. Now I won't use the forties as a classification because many women of forty look thirty or younger. I'll just say middle age. There are different ways of being beautiful at all these periods of our lives — different routines to follow, different preparations to use. It is silly and futile to try to look sixteen when you're thirty-five. It is equally silly, at sixteen, to use a flock of cosmetics and to assume the airs and graces of a grown woman. I received a letter the other day which read: "I am fifteen. What shades of powder, rouge, lipstick, / mascara, and eyeshadow shall I use?" I think we might as well start right there with a little advice to very young girls. With very rare exceptions, a mere child of fifteen should use no cosmetics at all! Perhaps a dab of powder on the nose. Perhaps a bit of colorless pomade to keep the lips smooth in cold weather. That's all. Now, I don't say that fifteen-year-olds — and even younger girls — cannot begin a systematic care of the skin, hair and figure. During adolescence the body is adjusting itself to the growing-up process. The skin often breaks out alarmingly. The hair often changes its color slightly, loses or develops a natural curl. The figure is often gawky or refuses to give up its baby fat. The tragic thing about this time of our lives is that we become clothes-conscious, beauty-conscious and boy-conscious all at once. We want to look as elegant as big sister all in five minutes. The care of the skin at this age should be simple but very faithful. Wash with mild soap and warm water. 7/ Follow with a second cleansing of cold cream. Remove it with tissues. Then give the face a second bath in soap and water to remove every trace of cream and finally dash the face with cold water. If the skin feels dry and drawn from the use of soap and water, then just use cream cleansings but pat the face with cotton soaked in a mild skin tonic afterwards. Even these dry-skinned girls should wash with soap and water every three or four days, in addition to the cream cleansings. If blackheads appear, they should be treated with a remedial cleanser — ■ either store-bought or home made. Pimples should be carefully doctored — and banished by strict diet. When they come to a head, they can be gently pressed out with the fingers thickly padded with tissues or cotton. Then the spot should be dusted with boracic powder or touched with alcohol to prevent infection. The hair should be massaged and brushed daily and washed not too frequently. It should be arranged simply and becomingly. Permanents can now be given young people and even children with marvelously natural effects. I think it far more sensible for mothers to permit their young daughters to get a good permanent — rather than constant marcels which, unless expertly and rather expensively done, will in the end break and dull the hair. Better still — there's no better time for the young girl to begin training her hair herself than when she is young. If I had a young daughter I wouldn't mind how long she primped in front of the mirror — provided she didn't go out of the house looking like something escaped from the zoo ! w HEN can a girl begin to use make-up — real makeup? Well, it depends a great deal upon the environ How to keep your beauty from Sweet Sixteen till Middle Age! 10