RED LIPS AND ROSY CHEEKS

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 236, 6 October 1936, Page 10

RED LIPS AND ROSY CHEEKS

gEAUTY is health; health is beauty.

The good red blood of health reveals itself in red lips and rosy cheeks, says “Tellurion” in the “Leader.” These signs of health are therefore facts of beauty, particularly of the beauty of women. And since all women seek to be beautiful, and Nature or circumstances has sometimes denied them colour, they have in all ages called upon the arts for assistance. The use of cosmetics (from a Greek word meaning “those things which adorn”) is possibly as old as civilisation itself. Still, those of us who are in the calms of the fifties may look back upon a youth when the use of such aids to beauty was severely frowned upon as conceit and wickedness.

Even the common reference books of those days were stiff and unbending, thus: “At .all times the use of cosmetics is to be discouraged." This was the swing of the pendulum towards Puritan ideas. Nowadays the pendulum has moved full-swing in the opposite direction. Cosmetics, aids for the beauty of hair, eyes, and skin, are not for high ladies only, but for all.

And this phase, like most things that we consider so new, is, as we have said, an old one. The tombs of the earliest British folk contained, among the treasures buried with their owners, pots of rouge. The tombs of Egyptian queens reveal similar secrets of the boudoir, and so do the latest discoveries in the tombs of Mesopotamian lands, the birthplace of our civilisation.

Six thousand years ago Queen Shushad, of the land of Ur, made herself more beautiful by blackening her eyelashes with special preparations. - Six thousand years ago the Aurignacian belles of Western, Europe owned ivory boxes in which they kept their rouge and powders, and 'even to-day the aboriginal men ;of Central Australia take special pleasure iu powdering their dusky faces with • the black spore powder of a stalked puffball—a fungus called Podaxom.

We have, of course, moved onwards — assuming that it is an onward movement. , In these latter days the cosine-

Cosmetics of the Past

tics bill of the women of the United States is five million dollars, a day. There is now a much wider variety of cosmetics used, and they aro much more universally applied. The whole world, figuratively and literally, bends itself to the supply of powders and perfumes. Sometimes, in this movement, there is a mischance. Recently an English actress became very ill, so that she had to cease her work. Her illness was serious and puzzling. She showed, for instance, certain definite symptoms of that peculiar upset of the human system that is called lead-poisoning! But how should a London actress acquire lead-poisoning, a disease usually closely associated with the mining, smelting, and working of lead*

By a very fine piece of work the two doctors in charge of the case traced the source of the trouble. It. was duo to

a grease paint, one of the cosmetic necessities of the stage. While most grease paints are quite harmless, the particular type used by this actress contained 42 per cent, of lead oxide. So ill was the actress that a blood transfusion was necessary to set her on her feet. Thenceforward her recovery was satisfactory and complete. This leads us to consider, very briefly, the number of details to be attended to in the preparation of simple cosmetics.

Face powder, for instance, of which there are numberless kinds on the market, should be made mainly of a type of kaolin (clay) that has been electrically refined; a little powdered soapstone is added to give “slip"; some magnesium stearate increases the sticking powers; zinc oxido imparts whiteness. To sill this a delicate touch of colour may bo added, and a suspicion of perfume. And so the mines and laboratories of the world contribute to the making of a face powder. Rouge is somewhat more complex.

Grease paints are different again. Under tiic artificial lights of stage and screen these have become widespread in use. Most of us know of them only from, the - use of lipstick. The colours of greaso paints are mainly obtained from oxides of iron and manganese—red, yellow and brown. Zinc oxide, kaolin, elialk, and talc are used for the body of the paint. Fats and waxes are added for firmness; and softness, vegetable oils, suet, and tallow. A delicate balance is needed concerning colour and temperature, and the specifications require that the lipstick must be “proof against osculation." The desire for red lips and rosy cheeks has given rise to a great industry. And, indeed, the applied materials are in most eases pleasant to see.