The Ugly-Girl Papers/Chapter 1

CHAPTER I.

• Woman's Business to be Beautiful.
• How to Acquire a Clear Complexion.
• Regimen for Purity of the Blood.
• Carbonate of Ammonia and Powdered Charcoal.
• Stippled Skins.
• Face Masks.
• Oily Complexions.
• Irritations of the Skin.
• Lettuce as a Cosmetic.
• Cooling Drinks.
• Sun Baths.
• Bread and Molasses.

The first requisite in a woman toward pleasing others is that she should be pleased with herself. In no other way can she attain that self-poise, that satisfaction, which leaves her at liberty to devote herself successfully to others.

I appeal to the ugly sisterhood to know if this is not so. Could a woman be made to believe herself beautiful, it would go far toward making her so. Those hopeless, shrinking souls, alive with devotion and imagination, with hearts as fit to make passionate and worshiped lovers, or steadfast and inspiring heroines, as the fairest Venus of the sex, need not for an instant believe there is no alleviation for their case, no chance of making face and figure more attractive and truer exponents of the spirit within.

There is scarcely any thing in the history of women more touching than the homage paid to beauty by those who have it not. No slave among her throng of adorers appreciated more keenly the beauty of Récamier than the skeleton-like, irritable Madame De Chateaubriand. The loveliness of a rival eats into a girl's heart like corrosion; every fair curling hair, every grace of outline, is traced in lines of fire on the mind of the plainer one, and reproduced with microscopic fidelity. It is a woman's business to be beautiful. She recommends every virtue and heroism by the grace which sets them forth. Women of genius are the first to lay the crown of womanhood on the head of the most beautiful. Mere fashion of face and form are not meant by beauty, but that symmetry and brightness which come of physical and spiritual refinement. Such are the heroines of Scott, Disraeli, and Bulwer, as inspiring as they are rare. Toward such ideals all women yearn.

Who will say that this most natural feeling of the feminine heart may not have some fulfillment in the first thirty years of life? This limit is given because the latest authorities in social science assert that woman's prime of youth is twenty-six, moving the barriers a good ten years ahead from the old standard of the novelist, whose heroines are always in the dew of sixteen. In the very first place, one may boldly say that beauty, or rather fascination, is not a matter of youth, and no woman ought to sigh over her years till she feels the frost creeping into her heart. Men of the world understand well that a woman's wit is finest, and her heart yields the richest wealth, when experience has formed the fair and colorless material of youth. A sweet girl of seventeen and a high-bred beauty of thirty, if well preserved, may dispute the palm. I do not mean to decry rose buds and dew. One hardly knows which to love them for most—their loveliness or their briefness. But women who look their thirties in the face should not lay down the sceptre of life, or fancy that its delights for them are over. They are young while they seem young.

Then we may boldly set about renovating the outward forin, sure that Nature will respond to our efforts. The essence of beauty is health; but all apparently healthy people are not fair. The type of the system must be considered in treatment. The brunette is usually built up of much iron, and the bilious secretion is sluggish. The blonde is apt to be dyspeptic, and subject to disturbances of the blood. From these causes result freckles, pimples, and that coarse, indented skin stippled with punctures, like the tissue of pig-skin—a fault of many otherwise clear complexions.

The fairest skins belong to people in the earliest stage of consumption, or those of a scrofulous nature. This miraculous clearness and brilliance is due to the constant purgation which wastes the consumptive, or to the issue which relieves the system of impurities by one outlet. We must secure purity of the blood by less exhaustive methods. The diet should be regulated according to the habit of the person. If stout, she should eat as little as will satisfy her appetite; never allowing her self, however, to rise from the table hungry. A few days' resolute denial will show how much really is needed to keep up the strength. When recovering from severe nervous prostration, years ago, the writer found her appetite gone. The least morsel satisfied hunger, and more produced a repugnance she never tried to overcome. She resumed study six hours a day and walked two miles every day from the suburbs to the centre of the city, and back again. Breakfast usually was a small saucer of strawberries and one Graham cracker, and was not infrequently dispensed with altogether. Lunch was half an orange—for the burden of eating the other half was not to be thought of; and at six o'clock a handful of cherries formed a plentiful dinner. Once a week she did crave something like beef-steak or soup, and took it. But, guiding herself wholly by appetite, she found with surprise that her strength remained steady, her nerves grew calm, and her ability to study was never better. This is no rule for any one, farther than to say persons of well-developed physique need not fear any limitation of diet for a time which does not tell on the strength and is approved by appetite. Never eat too much; never go hungry.

For weak digestion nothing is so relished or strengthens so much as the rich beef tea, or rather gravy, prepared from the beef-jelly sold by first-rate grocers. This is very different from the extracts of beef made by chemists. The condensed beef prepared by the same companies which send out the condensed milk is preferable, in all respects, as to taste and nourishment. A table- spoonful of this jelly, dissolved by pouring a cup of boiling water on it, and drank when cool, will give as much strength as three fourths of a pound of beef-steak broiled. For singers and students, who need a light but strengthening diet, nothing is so admirable.

Nervous people, and sanguine ones, should adopt a diet of eggs, fish, soups, and salads, with fruit. This cools the blood, and leaves the strength to supply the nerves instead of taxing them to digest heavy preparations. Lymphatic people should especially prefer such lively salads as cress, pepper-grass, horse-radish, and mustard. These are nature's correctives, and should appear on the table from March to November, to be eaten not merely as relishes, but as stimulating and beneficial food. They stir the blood, and clear the eye and brain from the humors of spring. Nervous people should be more sparing of these fiery delights, and eat abundantly of golden lettuce, which contains opium in its most delicate and least injurious state. The question of fat meat does not seem satisfactorily settled. I should compound by using rich soups which contain the essence of meats, and supply carbon by salad oil and a free use of nuts or cream. Plump, fair people may let oily matters of all kinds carefully alone. Thin ones should eat vegetables—if they can find a cook who knows how to make them palatable. It is strange that in this country, which produces the finest vegetables, fit for the envy of foreign cooks, not one out of a hundred knows how to prepare them properly. People who are anxious to be rid of flesh should choose acids, lemons, limes, and tamarinds, eat sparingly of dry meats, with crackers instead of bread, and follow strictly the advice now given.

To clear the complexion or reduce the size, the blood must be carefully cleansed. Two simple chemicals should appear on every toilet-table—the carbonate of ammonia and powdered charcoal. No cosmetic has more frequent uses than these. The ammonia must be kept in glass, with a glass stopper, from the air. French charcoal is preferred by physicians, as it is more finely ground, and a large bottle of it should be kept on hand. In cases of debility and all wasting disorders it is valuable. To clear the complexion, take a teaspoonful of charcoal well mixed in water or honey for three nights, then use a simple purgative to remove it from the system. It acts like calomel, with no bad effects, purifying the blood more effectually than any thing else. But some simple aperient must not be omitted, or the charcoal will remain in the system, a mass of festering poison, with all the impurities it absorbs. After this course of purification, tonics may be used. Many people seem not to know that protoxide of iron, medicated wine, and "bracing" medicines are useless when the impurities remain in the blood. The use of charcoal is daily better understood by our best physicians, and it is powerful, and simple enough to be handled by every household. The purifying process, unless the health is unusually good, must be repeated every three months. We absorb in bad food and air more unprofitable matter than nature can throw off in that time. If diet and atmosphere were perfect, no such aid would be needed; but it is the choice between a very great and a small evil in existing conditions. A free use of tomatoes and figs is, by the way, recommended, to maintain a healthy condition of the stomach, and the seeds of either should not be discarded.

The most troublesome task is to refine a stippled skin whose oil-glands are large and coarse. There may not be a pimple or freckle on the face, and the temples may be smooth, but the nose and cheeks look like a pin-cushion from which the pins have just been drawn. Patience and many applications are necessary, for one must, in fact, renew the skin.

The worst face may be softened by wearing a mask of quilted cotton wet in cold water at night. Roman ladies used poultices of bread and asses' milk for the same purpose; but water, and especially distilled water, is all that is needful. A small dose of taraxacum every other night will assist in refining the skin. But it will be at least a six weeks' work to effect the desired change; and it will be a zealous girl who submits to the discomfort of the mask for that length of time. The result pays. The compress acts like a mild but imperceptible blister, and leaves a new skin, soft as an infant's. Bathing oily skins with camphor dries the oil somewhat, when the camphor would parch nice complexions. The opium found in the stalks of flowering lettuce refines the skin singularly, and may be used clear, instead of the soap which sells so high. Rub the milky juice collected from broken stems of coarse garden lettuce over the face at night, and wash with a solution of ammonia in the morning.

Blondes who are unbeautiful are apt to have divers irritations of the skin, which their darker neighbors do not know. People of this type also have a tendency to acid stomachs, the antidote for which is a dose of ammonia, say one quarter of a spoonful in half a glass of water, taken every night and morning. This also prevents decay of the teeth and sweetens the breath, and is less injurious than the soda and magnesia many ladies use for acid stomachs. In summer the system should be kept cool by bathing at night and morning, and by tart drinks containing cream of tartar. Small quantities of nitre, prescribed by the physician, may be taken by very sanguine persons who suffer with heat; but pale complexions should seek the sun when its power is not too great, and be careful, of all things, to avoid a chill. This deadens the skin, paints blue circles round the eyes, and leaves the hands an uncertain color.

These precautions may seem burdensome, but they all have been practiced by those who prize beauty. Nothing is so attractive, so suggestive of purity of mind and excellence of body, as a clear, fine-grained skin. Strong color is not desirable. Tints, rather than colors, best please the refined eye in the complexion. Some mothers are so anxious to secure this grace for their daughters that they are kept on the strictest diet from childhood. The most dazzling Parian could not be more beautiful than the cheek of a child I once saw who was kept on oat-meal porridge for this effect. At a boarding-school, I remember, a fashionable mother gave strict injunctions that her daughter should touch nothing but brown bread and syrup. This was hard fare; but the carmine lips and magnolia brow of the young lady were the envy of her schoolmates, who, however, were not courageous enough to attempt such a régime for themselves.