THE CYNIC AND THE BEAUTY COMPETITION.

Otago Witness, Issue 3523, 20 September 1921, Page 51

THE CYNIC AND THE BEAUTY COMPETITION.

POWDER PUFFS IN THE BALANCE.

HU HE recent “Daily Mirror” Beauty Com- * petition seems, like a stone dropped in a pond, to have awakened a series of ripples which penetrate to all parts oi society. Hardly can one go to a “Victory Bali” for a few hours’ undiluted merriment not entirely unconnected with jazz, without finding that the dancing is to be interrupted by a “beauty competition.” Certainly the winners of these affairs do not leap into fame and fortune at a bound like the “Daily Mirror’s ’ lovely find, but they probably enjoy a certain amount of private satisfaction. One can imagine a cynic inviting his lady guest to a beauty-competition-dance. They appear painted, powdered, and marvelled. They dance, until the small hours, in the tempered glare of electric lights. Conies the dawn. The lights aro turned out: the curtains pulled back to let in the cruel morning light. “Ladies,” says the host, “will you take your places for the Beauty Competition?” Need any more be said? Few of us claim the perfection of beauty as set forth in someone’s criterion. “If yo-u can face the sun when all the others are sitting with their backs towards the light,” but under more kindly illumination it is possible to look one’s very prettiest at a dance. One must admit that the heat of ballrooms and the ardour of dancing are foes to the. complexion, and what maiden in these days of seriou3 dancing dares retire too frequently to powder her shining little nose?

and so saved Hungary from becoming ar adjunct of the older Power, such as she afterwards became under the Austrian Hapshttrgs. Even without the name ot Emperor, he ruled from the Baltic 8c:, to the Black Sea and Use Adriatic. All this aggrandisement, even though benevolently worked out, would not con firm the title of “Louis the Great” tc modern wavs of thinking. But Louis wa. won over by the Greek Emperor -of the East to a quest that truly made him “The Banner-bearer of the Church.” The storm of Turkish invasion had begun tc beat against Eastern Europe, and sonic of the Christian prineelets of the Balkans, in making treaties of statecraft with the savage Mongol hordes, were paving the way for their own bitter subjugation under Islam in later years. But Louis the Angevin was the far-sighted ruler of a people Mongoloid in origin, but whose standard of civilisation was as higli as any in Europe, and who had no sympathy -with the infidel savages who hail already destroyed the fringes of Greek and Slavic culture by the Levant. Louis took

Yet even this has its remedy, as the wise girls knows. Before coming to the dance Phyllis bathes her face and neck with a solution of pure cleininie, which fSiiO rubs t\gll into tiie skin with her fingertips until it is quite dry. This done, her with a solution of pure cleminite, which will remain unchanged during a whole evenmg s dancing*. 1 suppose every girl would like a new frock for each dance she goes to? But even the unemployed would find that rather a strain on the exchequer. It is a consolation, even if a poor one, to reflect flat no amount of frocks will give a girl real prettiness which is what counts in the end, A pretty complexion, which is the beginning of all beauty, is quite- cheap, you know. For about one half-penny you can have a clean, fresh, new skin (not the old one cleaned up for the occasion) for every dance you go to. I expect any girl could explain this apparent mystery. For the benefit of those who cannot, here is the solution. Get .some mercolised wax from the chemist. R is rather expensive but it lasts a long time with care. Smear it over your face before going to bed, not- using too much, and wash it off in the morning. . 7he oxygen contained in the wax absorbs the, outer skin which has become rough and coarse, and gives the new skin below a chance to show itself. Quite simple isn’t it? Certainly, the sort of complexion you get from using simple preparations like the above should be an asset, in any beauty competition -even the cvnic’s !

the field against the Ottoman forces, and inflicted a crashing defeat on the Turks. Had the princes of the West rallied to Hungary as they should have done, the Ottoman invaders had been turned back to Asia Minor, and five centuries of degradation and blood had been averted from Europe. As it was, the victory of Louis checked the Turkish march for many years. I A distinguished advance in art, education. and general government was made in Hungary during Louis’s reign. The Angevin princes were, more Magyar than the Magyars, and Hungary justly regards the reign of Louis as a season of genuine greatness. (To be Concluded.)