IS RED HAIR STRANGE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 4408, 23 October 1934, Page 4

IS RED HAIR STRANGE.

I know a girl with the most beautiful red hair (says “Madelon,” in this month’s “Australian Journal”). She is in a continual agony of embarrassment because of it, going to all manner of extremes to render it less conspicuous. Really, it reminds one of spun gold and russet, but she calls it red, and suffers as only a girl can suffer in that way. Rather foolish, if we analyse it, for the great artists of the world have made red hair a thing of beauty in perpetuation on canvas. What of the glorious Titian women, and the bright headed ladies sketched by Barribal for magazine covers? However, there we are. Some people see something strange in red hair, but they are people without an eye for characterful beauty. I met this girl on a boat, not many miles out from Samiarai, a small, lovely island at the toe of New Guinea’s boot-shaped island. She was hot, worried, and miserable, and I asked her why on earth sho kept her summer-weight red felt hat on in the shade of the deck awning. She looked liar at me, then confessed. Red hair! Couldn’t bear people looking at her. I glanced over her and said “No wonder,” whereupon, she looked tearful, but I soon checked that and talked common-sense.

I took her below to her cabin — of course I knew her by now —ancl we rummaged in her trunk. She mostly scowled at the things she dragged out, but I made her switch on her electric iron, and we got busy. She simply had no artistic eye. Because red and blue were fashionable, she wore a kind of flag effect with white and a scarf and the red hat previously mentioned. She said that she thought the bright colours would “kill” her own bright hair. Anyhow, we had several arguments, with, finally, proof to the contrary. I had found a pale green scarf, a white frocik, a green belt, and white hat. I fastened the licit round the hat, and got her into the white frock, then wrapped the scarf round her very slim hips. Then I went to my cabin and found some oil-brilliantinej and returned. A towel round her shoulders, a brush and comb, a fine green ribbon from my boxes, and so her hair was done. Crisp, shining and several shades darker, it was brushed severely back from her face and fixed back with a ribbon round her head, giving her an Alice-in-Wonderland coiffure. The hair was wiry, curly and stubborn, but it soon responded to the brilliantinc and became orderly. She creamed her face with cold cream —not vanishing cream', which does not suit many complexions—wiped the cream off', then dabbed on some white Java rice powder, touching the brows and lashes with a tiny scrap of brilliantine and a brushing of eye-shadow. The hot, gingery, dry look had gone from her. She next used a pale pink lip-stidk, after rubbing the lips with lanoline to soften them. A transfonnation! After regarding herself in the mirror she swore that every bright frock would go overboard, and henceforth pale green, of a milky cool shade, would bo her chief colour.

She danced that night in a black frock with a pale green and lemon scarf, gold shoes and filmy black stodkings, a harsh blue frock bundled away never again to be worn. She was a success. “Who on earth is that distinctive kid with the bright head?” a man asked. Quite a flirtation after that. I hope she married him. His hah’ was as Indian ink.