Faces and Figures.

Matamata Record, Volume XIV, Issue 1193, 5 February 1931, Page 3

Faces and Figures.

Concentration on faces and figures is the business of the moment in New York, for the ravages of a particularly hot and trying summer have to be repaired (writes a correspondent).. Heat makes for increased weight and too much sunshine for too many wrinkles. That carefully-acquired tan is delightful when one first comes back to city life but is appalling when it fades to sickly yellow. For slimming there is a new “ balanced diet,” though many prefer the 18-days’ regime. There is the electric roller which is found in many bathrooms, and which is used after a warm bath to massage the particular places where flesh has accumulated, and there are Swedish exercises. The “ balanced diet ” calls for half a grape fruit, two lightly-boiled eggs, and a cup of black coffee, or milk and- sugarless tea, for breakfast. Both at lunch and dinner you may have a generous piece of any kind of meat and a liberal helping of one of these vegetables—spinach, cabbage, cauliflower, celery and lettuce, the first three to be cooked without any butter. -That is all. Not even a piece of dry toast till the re- i quired loss of flesh is accomplished. {

Fewer Cosmetics. One of the latest aids to restoration of beauty is oil. Olive oil has always been recommended as excellent for the hair, but now it is mixed with an equal part of castor oil, and the two oils are applied with great care to hair that bathing anc* hatless excursions in the sunshine have rendered harsh and colourless. The New York woman uses them this way. After a good brushing and scalp massage, the oils are applied with a camel hair brush to every inch of the scalp, and with the hands to the hair from its roots to its end?. Then a hot towel is wrapped round the head and left till it cools, when another takes its place. This process can be continued as long as one has time to give to it—certainly not less than as hour —and is followed by a good shampoo. The oil treatment for the face is a home affair also. This does not mean that the American woman is neglecting her beauty saloons, but merely that she treats herself as well. This oil rub was recommended by a doctor to a celebrated actress, who made it public. The purest olive oil is used after tne face has been wrapped in heated cloths. It is rubbed well into the pores with the necessary upward motion. Then more heat is applied, and more oil. The last application of oil is mixed with the white of an egg, which has bleaching and astringent properties. The hot cloth covers the face again and more oil is used to remove the

egg and oil when dry. Then follows an ice rub, when ice, wrapped in. a cloth, is passed lightly over the skin. As for cosmetics, the New York woman is using them more sparingly than she has