Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1926)

Friendly Advice on Problems from Carolyn Van Wyck D to forget myself at parties or any place where I when you realize, deep in your subconscious meet people socially. In fact. I am getting so ness. that you are only a very small cog in the shy that I even avoid people I know well. My giganti wheel of existence friends ask me out. I want to go and yet I refuse, knowing I'll be awkwar and tongue-tied. Boys think I'm proud and affected. I'm not. I'm just scared of doing or saying the wrong thing. All my girl friends seem able to just talk and have a good time with boys, but something holds me back. Could you tell me how I can forget myself and really amount to something? Evelyn M. \ little more quiet humor, a little more simplicity and sincerity, will show any girl that unless she i being entertaining, charming and amusing, she will not be the center of attention. It is nonsense to think you will be sharply observed if you sit alone in a corner. You wiil merely be forgotten. I had among my acquaintances agirl who was EAR CAROLYN" VAX WYCK: «ill rind it impossible to sit solemn ami un That terrified her worse than ever. The very What can I do to overcome self-con happy at a party believing every eye is hostile idea of her prancing about a large room, very sdousness? It seems impossible for me and every whisper is detailing your defects scantily clad, before a class of other girls, seemed almost impossible to her. But she was desperate and finally joined. For the first few lessons self-consciousness rooted her to the floor. Then she essayed a step or two. She was excessively awkward. Like all self-conscious people, her attention was so directed upon herself. she saw every one of her faults. Frightened, she looked around her. F.very other pupil was dancing. Even' other pupil was just about as bad as she was. Xo one had noticed her trembling start. She tried again and again. X'ever did an eye turn her way. Then she realized the truth. Xo one saw the mistakes she made, because each individual was too interested in herself, too occupied with her own mistakes. And with that, the girl gained the door to freedom from a bad mental habit. She told me later that even today when she enters a room and sometimes feels the old terror stealing upon lur she says to herself. "They can't really see me. They are all too busy watching themselves.'' X'ow people speak of her as a girl of unusual charm and poise. So to you girls I recommend that you master a few little social graces. Try to be a game sport. Play some game well, if it's only bridge. Be able to dance and to carry a tune. Look to your personal appearance. Make your eyes and your hair have lustre and your skin be clear. Be neat and tidy in vour dress and positive always that nothing is gaping, no buttons or laces are tumbling loose, no threads hanging. The discovery of such things about your costume will make you self-conscious in an instant. Get a hobby that is really interesting, so that your friends will have something to talk to you about, something to learn from you. Finally, remember, most people are selfconscious, too. Most people are shy. Few know just how to act and almost everyone is pretty bored. Silence in public may have landed a few men in the White House but it never got any woman as far as the church supper. [ CONTINUED OX PACE 121 ] Are vou reallv willing to forget vourself, Evelyn M.? That's all there is to curing self-consciousness, the forgetting of self for the while in the joy of being happy. Self-consciousness left to itself can master even the finest mind. It can tear down the most charming personality. It is, as Bertrand Russell points out. a deliberate choosing to be miserable rather than risk being unusual. And it is. for all its business of masking itself in the robes of humility, a major form of conceit. Yet. I recognize from the letters you girls write me. that it is a problem troubling many of you. Well, my dears, one of its causes is your youth. You haven't had time, most of you, to gain social poise. You've not had years enough for accomplishments that might bring you. automatically, a position of respect and admiration. .And so, you're letting self-consciousness tie you into bowknots. You don't need to have that happen. It isn't half so arduous getting over self-consciousness as it is getting over being too fat. You don't need diet and you don't need exercise. You simply need a change of mental attitude. The quickest and easiest cure is to develop your sense of humor. This humor is not necessarily of the wise-cracking, life-of-the-party sort. That's excellent, too. but what you need here is the ability to see the world and life as an amusing phenomena. Look at life that way and you will look at yourself similarly. You 100 Pamphlet on Reducing Following the announcement that I would send specific instructions on diet, skin troubles, or any other beauty problem, I have been so deluged with requests that as yet it has been absolutely impossible to comply with all of them. The majority of the letters have asked for instructions on diet and reducing. To comply with these I have had printed a new, eight-page pamphlet, illustrated with exercises that help you reduce in a sane manner. The price of this booklet is ten cents. All other beauty advice will be sent on receipt of a stamped, self-addressed envelope. To those of you who have written me and not yet heard from me, I ask you to wait just a little longer. Not one of your letters has been lost and you will, every one of you, get a personal reply. CAROLYN VAN WYCK. so self-conscious she suffered intensely at evensocial contact. She could never talk to boys of her own age. Once in a while when she got with a man old enough to be her grandfather, and who accordingly couldn't interest her in the least, she became natural and talked fluently. But bring her into a room full of young people of her own years and type and her eyes would dilate and her muscles stiffen with fear. She got so desperate, finally, that she went to a psychologist. He told' her to study (.reck dancing.