COST OF COSMETICS

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 33, 8 February 1930, Page 4 (Supplement)

COST OF COSMETICS

WHY BE YOUNG?

VALUE OVERRATED,

Sixty-five million pounds a year spent in England alone on cosmetics and hair culture! It makes you think, does it not? says a correspondent in an English paper. But, .like so many things, unless it .makes you think twice, it may easily make you think wrong. It may cause you to jump to the conclusion that women are an extravagant and selfish sex—unless you remember 'that the country's cosmetic bill is considerably less than a quarter of its drink bill, which is incurred mainly by men.

It may cause you to suppose that •there is a lot of money lying about to be had for the asking—unless you remember that the gigantic expenditure of sixty-five millions has to be divided up among a good .many million women and girls. the average feminine expenditure on cosmetics cannot work out at appreciably more than eighteenpence a week; and, since many rich women spend big sums in this way, there must, to keep the average at that figure, be very many women who spend nothing. Why Race With Time? AIJ the same, sixty-five million pounds is a lot of money. And I am told that the American statistics are even more startling. I almost feel that I could make those up for myself. "The lipsticks used annually "at Hollywood," one might .say, "would, if placed end to end, reach from here to Mars." Or, more appropriately, perhaps to Venus. It is certain, anyhow, that far more is now spent on cosmetics than was spent a few years ago. It is certain that the expenditure is increasing rather than otherwise. Nor is this the only sign of a new attitude towards the inescapable problem of youth and age. No longer are people content to give up, early in life, the battle against time. They know that time will win in the long run, but they have decided to make the run as long as possible.' Girl-like Grannies. An -admirably sporting attitude! Mothers of families are not content nowadays to become back numbers, they are determined to go on being girls until they are grannies! They use cosmetics, and they keep their figures. The latter often takes much more time than the former; it requires will, determination, persistence. As was long ago observed, it is easier to make up your face than to make up your mind. And, in the.end, what is it all for! To remain young! To extend a little longer that period of bloom and hope, .which in any case in a few years must ;bo over! Is not the emphasis on this particular aspect of life a little absurd? Folly of Keeping Young. It is, of course, better to be fit and active at 40 than dull and sluggish at 40. But it is a mistake to delude yourself into the- belief that you are by this means remaining twenty. And why, in the name of all that is logical and sensible, should you remain twenty, or want to?

It is very nice for tho young to be young. Youth is their proper state, with all its joys—and incidentally all its drawbacks; but it is not the proper fixate for the rest of us.

If it is nice for the young to he young, why on earth is it not pleasant for the middle-aged to be middle-aged? Speaking as a man who is middleaged and not ashamed of it, I simply cannot understand why the fact that I and my contemporaries were 'born in the 'eighties should automatically make us leas virtuous, less useful, or less happy than we should be if we had come into the world twenty years later! Ago Does not Matter. The old used to make a virtue of being old. Now the young —and, for that matter, the old as well—make a virtue of 'being young. The one attitude is as unreasonable and unseasonable as the other. We ought, as Stevenson said, to travel deliberately through our ages. When I meet a man of sixty, I do not despise him for being sixty. Possibly he does, not walk as fast as I do; but possibly he thinks faster! The sensible course is to judge him by whether his sixty years have been spent usefully and honourably, not by their , mere number. To want to be young as well as old is greedy, and prevents us from growing old gracefully. Gracefully or not, we have to grow old somehow. No cosmetics can cover up the fact, no illusions disguise it. There : can be no disgrace in a condition which is .universal. ' • ■ ■ / The Joy of Living., But I- am not suggesting that we should merely bow to the inevitable. I am ■ suggesting, not that we . should "make the best of it" (which usually means making the worst of it), but that we should make of it. something .positively and constructively good.

No time of life is in itself better or worse than any other. Let us give up pretending, and get on with the job of living!

That is to say, of growing old,