“Savouries” and the Complexion

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9, 4 March 1905, Page 60

“Savouries” and the Complexion

Byron's ’‘bread-and-butter mi*s” was a little mawkish and sickly sentimental, perhaps, but sin* had a lovely milk-and-m.-cs complexion. \n<l so would SO per cent, of women if thr\ only kept to a simple nursery diet. But directly a girl conus out she kicks over health trace* and starts on devilled kidneys and Wel-h rarebits, ele., at supper after the play. And then the trouble with her skin begins. Il is only within the past 15 years that women woke up to the epicurean • lelights of the hors d’oeuvre and the To start with olives, German sausage, and raw salt anchovies, and to finish up with devilled bones or chee-e with chillies, used to be considered only fit l< r a man. Nowadays, girls ami women take these things as a matter of course. In the writer’s own family, if a feminine person had l>een seen 15 years ago eating cheese, pickles, chutney, smoked sahm n. or any of the highly spiced *>a\oiiries which now appt ar at breakfast. himdieon, ami dinner. she would have h •(•n thought hopelessly vulgar. Nowadays, mere girls are not satisfied without sm-h highly spiced pick me-up* and I i hits at every meal. It was a tearful shock not long since to see a charming looking girl of 17 eating piekit d onions ami pork, ami drinking a -mall w hisky-and-soda ! (hie knew that food of this sort would ab olutely ruin her skin ami complexion before she was 25. Ohl-fashioned mothers used to take the utmost care of their young daughters’ diol. Their food was simple and pun . as a young girl’s diet should be. B\ roll’s ’’bread ami-hut ter miss” has been a good deal ridiculed: hut a man would he much more likely to idealise, romance over, and fall in love with her than with her chutney and “savoury” modern *i<tvr! And tin skin and complexion of such a girl would be a thing of beauty and joy to her and others for Since woman took to man’s rich, spiced, and sea-oned foods, and dined so much in public restaurants, ate made-up dishes, entrees, and the complexion ami digestion-destroying diet st rved at table d'hotes. there lias been a regular rush for beauty doctors, face masseuse-, ami every conceivable sort of art ilieial make-up. It is -.aid you can’t eat your cak<* and Neither can you eat the strong diet of a man to say nothing of drinking hi- -d l ong drinks and smoking his cigar* ett(- and have the skin and complexion of a daintily-living, pure-dieled woman. And it is of no use to imagine that -teaming, strapping, cream- at a guinea a pot and face massage will ecn<eal the havoc wrought in a woman’s beauty by ’’restaurant food.” An unnatural diet causes unnatural wear and tear. And just as Ihi re is no royal road to learning. >o there is no royal road to beauty. T! r way i- built up largely of ■elf-de-nial and careful diet. "Home ( ha’.”