Helen Valentine - Better than Beauty: A Guide to Charm

ONCE in a lifetime you may meet that rare person whose face and appearance you forget, but whose charm remains indelible. It doesnt happen often. What we see usually becomes a vital part of our impression of people, our brain picture.

Your skin, your makeup, your hair, your hands, the way you sit, the way you standthese are the priming coat, the background upon which all other qualities are imposed. What can you do to make your physical self more expressive of that important inner quality of warmth and friendliness?

If you get a great lift out of a dozen sweet-smelling jars of creams and lotions on your dressing table, buy all you can afford. But buy them for their morale-building qualities. There are only three things a normal skin needs. Abnormal skin needs a doctor.

Your skin needs a healthy diet. It can be no better than your stomach and your blood. Plenty of water, green vegetables, fruits, eggs, milk (but no excesses in food or drink) make your body healthy and are a basic diet for a healthy skin.

The second necessity is proper external cleansing. Twice a day your skin must be thoroughly cleansed. You may belong to the soap and water school or the cream-cleansing school. The surest technique, and one that will serve for all parts of the country, is the combination of cream and soap and water. You can use this in the very dry West, the very humid East, and the dusty in-betweens. Give your face and neck a thorough application of any good cream, a gentle but complete wiping off, and then a lathery face-wash with a mild soap and warm water, followed by a rinse with cool water. The very dry skin that peels easily may need a light coating of cream after the rinse.

The third essential is becoming makeup. And the clue is in the word becoming. Your makeup must become a part of you. If it is so off-key, if it is so startling that it dazzles, or so underdone that it causes spectators to worry over your health, it is not part of you. Freakish eyebrows, gooey eyelids, too-pale cheeks, and completely untouched-by-beauty-aids faces are all unnatural. What! No makeup at all unnatural? For an urban woman under sixty, yes! For though that woman may be as nature made her, she will look colorless among her brightened-up sisters.

Makeup is a very simple matter of using your eyes, your color sense, and your hand. Any woman who can match a sample of thread to a piece of fabric can select the correct shades of makeup for herself. And any woman who can hold a pencil and make it write can apply lip-rouge, powder, and other cosmetics to her face. There is no magic, no mystery, no hidden trick.

This isnt a mural for the Louvre

Here is the routinea ten-minute task for an amateur, a three-minute performance for an old hand.

Color doesnt grow in splotchy circles

1. Your face is clean. Apply an all-over foundation cream (any reputable brand) in a shade that matches your skin tone.
2. With the light shining on your face, prepare to do the rest of the job. If this is a daytime makeup, take a mirror (you can get a very adequate one for thirty cents) to the window, hang it on the window lock, and face it.
3. Dip a big powder puff in a light-textured face powder that matches your skin tone; pat the powder on all over your face. Put on plenty.
4. Use a soft powder brush (theyre sold in ten-cent stores) to brush off the excess powder.
5. Apply rouge lightly to the cheeks. Never mind all the confusing details of planes and angles. This isnt a mural for the Louvre, its your face. And you know, without art lessons, that natural color doesnt grow in splotchy circles or streaky lines or huge rose-pink areas. Put your rouge on so that it looks like your own color, and blend it with your powder so that it fades into the normal shade of your own skin.
6. Use a good quality lipstick. Again, use your color sense in choosing the shade of lipstick. If you are a white-skinned brunette with a faint blue cast to your skin, use a lipstick that tends toward the raspberry. If you are creamy-skinned with more yellow in your skin, use a lipstick that verges on the orange shades.
   The major job in lipstick application, and the one most neglected, is the completion of the task. The casual smear, the quick once-over, will not work. Get that brutal light on your face and apply your lipstick meticulously, so that it covers all parts of the lips evenly. Now bite down on a piece of cleaning tissue. This takes off the excess and prevents that most unlovely accidentlipstick on your teeth.
7. If your brows are blonde or not well defined, use an eyebrow pencil lightly. And if you are out to be devastating, mascara on your eyelashes wont hinder you.