CULT OF BEAUTY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 185, 6 August 1932, Page 4 (Supplement)

CULT OF BEAUTY.

TO PREVENT WRINKLES.

CARE IN DIET.

(By a BEAOTX SPECIALIST.)

A very important thing e to remember, if you would have a good complexion, is to watch your diet. Be very careful in eating and try and eat wholesome food as much as you can. If you would have a clear complexion, leave off the pastry and sweets in your diet. Eat vegetables, fruit, well-cooked meat, but not a great amount of any one of them. Be careful about the wrinkles that will some day begin to appear in your face, because no amount of beauty culture will really cure them. Wrinkles tell tales on you as nothing else does; they are the footmarks of time over your face, showing whether you have faced life with a laugh, a pout, a sneer or a grumble. J Laughter wrinkles are very beautiful, making you spread an air of contentment around you. They paint sweetness on your face, just as sneer wrinkles paint bitterness there, and they never tell lies, because they are traced by your own character. Look in your mirror. If you see laughter wrinkles about mouth and eyes, you know that all is well. If you see bitter or tragic wrinkles there, take stock of your life. What is making my face so much less beautiful than Nature intended it to be? What I am grieving about. What I am sneering about. Tlio only grief that is lasting enough to fret wrinkles on your face is self-pity, the most destructive of all emotions, since it shuts you away from any sunshine that could come. Look into your surroundings.

Have you anything to pity yourself for 2 Anything real, anything desperate? If you have, fight it, don't sit down under it. Better to die fighting than to go through life with a constant grudge against everything and everybody. And if there is nothing real to feel a grievance about, shake yourself up and make a fresh start by trying to realise how fortunate you are. There are such a lot of marvels in life to say "thank you" for. Instead of grumbling, it seems to me, we should don our thinking caps and endoavour in our own little way to make the world a shado better and happier, there is so much in life, so much that is interesting. It seems scarcely possible for anyone to get bored,, there is such an enormous amount happening, and so little time in which to see it all, much less to do our little bit to contribute to this wonderful period we live in. Most thinking people are apt to take all these modern miracles for granted. It is a great pity. One should be conscious every minute of every day of the wonders that are continuously happening — flying, wireless transmission, talkies, television and luxurious travel. But not only are these taken as ordinary everyday occurrences, but some people even criticise and complain. The Slimming Craze. It is said that the "slimming craze" is now bearing fruit, and is responsible for the faces like masks, scraggy shoulders and lamp-post figures to be seen here, there and everywhere.

Another reason for the haggard faces and thin, scraggy bodies seen about is the cocktail craze. One merely has to look at men's faces to realise that drink and skin never agree! These haggard, mask-like faces denote a good deal of spirit inside their bodies, rather than spiritual souls. In life, we all know that prettiness is still all-conquering, and though women adore scraggy and lamppost figures, men simply detest them.

New Vogue Needed.

But until the fashion dictators introduce a vogue in which the human figure can be comfortably put, women will suffer hunger, nervous exhaustion and the necessity of alcoholic stimulation, with the inevitable sequel of bored, wrinkled and cadaverous faces. There is no doubt that happy people or people who take life easily are pretty, and bored people —no matter how they started — invariably become hags, with faces like masks. Another thing which destroys all prettiness ai'd accentuates the mask-like appearance is make-up, but to-day most women feel positively naked unless they are sheltering behind a lipstick. The emotional woman grows old much quicker than the calm one. Each different emotion has, for the most part, its own special organ of expression. Thus rage hastens the heartbeats, shame dilates certain blood vessels, fear reduces the tone of many muscles, dilates the iris-and dries up the glands of the mouth. The nervous person is a person in whom the nerve centres are not sufficiently under normal control. Some of the expressions of nervousness are restlessness, sleeplessness, irritability of temper,' emotions too easily aroused, a tendency to weeping, some forms of indigestion, altered heartbeat, headache. There is a gradual or sudden failure of tho staying power of tlie nervous system which expresses itself in that common experience, a nervous breakdown, and a nervous breakdown would seem to be commoner among men than women. - Sleep is tho natural process of

giving rest to the nerves, of getting rid of the effects of "fatigue poisons" circulating in the blood. . Therefore, I would recommend all those of my readers who are troubled with their nerves to get as much sleep and rest as possible. Rest whenever you can, and as often as you can. Don't fuss, don't worry. Take a cold douche after your bath, plenty of fresh air, and plenty of exercise.