ON BEING A BRUNETTE

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 3492, 30 October 1926, Page 4

ON BEING A BRUNETTE

(Note By Anita Loos) When I first read that real quaint book that everyone’s pretending they’ve read even if they haven’t 1 sort of felt I'd have to go down town right away and get my hair fixed up with peroxide so I could see what it was like to be preferred by gentlemen. I moan. to say It's not because I'm mad about diamond bracelets or candies or fizz or jazz and I'd look the funniest sight ever in decollete evening gowns because my figure isn’t Amurrican enough and I've got a long nose that I’ve got to thank iny Irish great-grandmother for. But I guess I wouldn’t mind having a few guys lurking around to say It in flowers once in a while. But when I started thinking because you See I'm a hopeless brunette and that’s one of our few privileges I decided in the end it wouldn’t cut any ice to waste good dollars on the blonde camouflage and there’d be no roses brought round to ’my’ apartment door, Because any gentleman would sure see the difference right away between a born blonde and a fixed-up one and he’d put me on tho fifty-fifty level from tho word go if he wasted any looks on mo at all. X mean to say a brunette goes on being a brunette no matter how cute the coiffeur is 1 and she just can’t help herself. So her being peroxided wouldn’t take in the bell-boy much less a gentleman because she’d never learn how to put the blonde-dolly stuff over in a million years when she’s got the independence habit that goes with dark hair and the sort of eyes that freeze off any guy who gets a bit fresh. So 1 said to myself I’d just better forget it because I mean to say if you can’t put over the mushy talk and you’re too quick on the uptake the gentlemen who prefer the languid Lucky Blondes will only engage you as a stenographer and they’ll take your blonde-dolly room-mate out to dinner and you’ll just get a sniff of her lillies-of-the-valley when she comes home and you can have her empty candy-box for your handkerchiefs if she’s feeling good because the gentleman has bought her a real stvell present. And anyway as I said to Molly who’s a born blonde and has got so many real gentlemen that she’s bored stiff with them and says she’ll marry a cowpuncher in tho end, the autho: of that real quaint book has got the laugh on all the golden-haired gin and the swell guys w T ho prefer then because she’s a brunette herself an. she’s told the world she’s got a wunncrful cute husband and he’s a doggone caveman. So I guess I’ll stay brunette and maybe one of these fine days I’ll find a boy who’s willing to try out a fifty-fifty heart contract with a girl whose ready to give him ■a square deal even if she can’t make googoo eyes and has got her Irish great-grandmother’s nose.