WHY DO WOMEN PAINT?

Hokitika Guardian, 25 September 1925, Page 4

WHY DO WOMEN PAINT?

(By Lady Xoraii Bcntick.)

"Why do women paint their faces;-' Obviously because they suppose it improves their looks. And, generally they are right. Just as most, men are horn with an ingrained love of gambling—the idea of getting something for nothing—so must women are born with a love of beautifying their bodies for the delectation of man. That it is (.lone with the ultimate—though not always completely conscious—desire to attract men is probably 'true; and yet there are plenty of men who say they hate it. But 1 do not think they can alwavs detect it. do von P

.Moralists in all ages have condemned the use of rouge as a .-dgn of wantonness in the individual and decadence in the, race. But, as it. is practically impassible to iiud an age when women did not paint,, one is constrained to ask when were the good old days ’

1 1 i the ]!th century the Florentine women had the reputation of being “the best-painted women in the world,” and all women were described by a chronicler of that day a- "always vain and light,, so that, if you have them in tin* house, never take your eyes off them, hut watch them and make them fear you." Of a widow named IVrette in the year 12,10 it is told that after her husband had been dead lint three days she was in pursuit of another one with “Sillc dresses, false 'hair, and rouge.” The liussvl

Although one would have thought most of them were, hy this time, inoi ulated against the evil effects of colour poisoning, there are still men extant who object lo the idea of bestowing greetings of an enormous nature upon rouged lips, saying that they do not want to get ptomaine poisoning. But on the whole I should say that men cannot really object to it. considering the numbers of women who adopt, the fashion. Or do men merely put up with what they can neither end nor mend ? Maybe .Miss Rl lb will have swung hack to being a maid of dimity and while muslin, as demure and unpaiiited as her great-grand-mother ; a tiling of “prunes and prisms" rat Iter than of fags and cocktails. But stilly it a touch of a geranium leaf under each eye will lift a maid from plainness to prof t iiiess. there is surely no law. cither Divine or manmade. In prevent her applying that rosy petal 1