AMERICA’S BEAUTY BILL.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5238, 13 February 1928, Page 4

AMERICA’S BEAUTY BILL.

£400,000,000 A YEAR. -

OVER £1,0'00,000 A DAY.

If American women are the most beautiful in the world. —and that claim is often made on their behalf—they owe much of their attractiveness, to man. At least, that is the implication behind a cartoon published recently showing an American girl ready for her evening party and surrounded by a group of men who declared that they were her creators. The allusion, of course, is to the prolific use of cosmetics in the make-up of the modern woman, for in fr°nt pf the group stoood conspicuously a “cosmetician ” and a “ beautician,” as they name these gentlemen in) the States.

The amount American women spend annually on their beauty is £400,000,000. Throughout the States you will find 40 beauty parlours, taking over the counted £1,000,000 a day. There are 7,000 different kinds <-f beauty preparations sold to the 30,000,000 women who spend daily this large sum. So eagerly do they haunt the parlours that a Parisian specialist who comes each winter to America keeps, like the dentist or doctor, an engagement book with a waiting list filled six weeks ahead.

Each shop has its beauty consultant. He advises a customer on the treatment she; should have, the powder best suited for her complexion, and the cream to be used. How delicately he talks : not “ This! astringent for the; wrinkles yoiu have,” but “ for those you may have.” As in life’s other worries, so in l beauty presjervation, prevention is better than cure.

WHY THERE WAS A DIVORCE.

The other day an American obtained a divorce on the; grounds that hisi wife ran up inordinate bits for cosmetics. The indictment against her read that she had spent money on

“ eyebrow pencils, face lotionls 1 , creams, lip sticks, and facial surgery.” But the men can hardly throw stones at their womenfolk. In the barbers’ shopsi they spend £170,000,000 each year, and all of it goes in simple shades and haircuts. Face massage swallows up £20,000,000’, and hair .lotions £40,000,000. America isi the country of. youth, and men as they pass middle-aged seek to remove those signs of care that may tejl against them in the keen competition of the business w'orld. A man will emerge from a de luxe shop in Fifth Avenue with £2 less) in his pockeit as the result of one visit to his “barber.”

'While this modern vanity is making millionaires of those who cater to the modern cult of beauty, little of this money is earned by the skilled worker. The beauty-makers draw less than one-third of the'millions spent. They work long, irregular hours for an average wage of £3 10s a week.

It is said that a fe;w men can earn £l5 a week in’New York’s exclusive shops, but official statistics' give no record of this princely Wage. Yet there are many schools,, from w.hich 50,000 students graduate yearly, engaged in teaching the art of beautifying. ONE DOCTOR’S BOMBSHELL. It is since the war that this trade has flourished, increasing 600 per cent, in the past ten years. Doctors sometime,s,' but in vain, c’eclaim against the poison in cosmetics. Few American women will endure the wrinkle and the silvering .hair considered an adornment by their Victorian grandmothers. One doctor has come to their support. Lip-sticks, he says, are harmless, but beware of kissing. That is; where the germs lie.