THE USE OF COSMETICS.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 958, 9 July 1881, Page 2

THE USE OF COSMETICS.

An English woman writes thusj — Having read several accounts purporting to tell how the writers had been beautified by paints and cosmetics in professional hands, I wondered whether it was really a fact that a woman’s face could be so deftly “ made up ”as to defy deception. There was only one way to test the question, and that was to submit myself personally to treatment. So I went to the foremost “ beautifying bazaar ** in the city, the one about which I had heard the most praise, and soon found myself in a small private room, seated in something like a barber’s chair before a mirror, with a female operator. She began by making me take off the waist of my dress, and then she enveloped me in a loose muslin wrapper. <Next she shampooed my hair thoroughly, and that felt cool and good. Then she dried it with a sponge, brushed it up from my neck and forehead, and dressed it after the fashion of the .period, using a great deal bf sticky bandoline. She went from my hair to my eyes, bathing them with a liquid which .probably had belladonna m it, for it enlarged the pupils and imparted a brilliancy. The next operation wlys to pull out a stray hair here and there on my neck, arms and shoulders, with a pair of tweezers. Then she washed my face with a pale, rose-coldured cosmetic, which dried rapidly while she rubbed it with a soft sponge. With a rabbit’s foot, such as is used by actors, she put a higher tint on my cheeks, and some bright rouge on my lips and my nostrils. With a brush she blackened my eyebrows, lashes and underneath my eyes. The veins of my temples were delicately traced with light bluey and finally I was dabbled with powder. The operation was just what I expected, and I paid £1 for it. I was also invited to buy the various things which the undeniably skilful woman had used on me; Well, my verdict on the result is this : No , woman can paint without detection. Devotees of fashion may just as well abandon the contrary opinion. I looked into the mirror on getting out of the chair and hardly recognised myself. ) My face was greatly changed. My eyes shone, my cheeks glowed, and there wa» | brightness and piquancy that had not been there when I entered. But this, mind you, was in a somewhat dimly-lighted room, where the work was softened and shaded.. Ten minutes afterwards I met myself in a street under the full glare of a noonday sun. WelL I was simply disgusted. The paintecH surface looked no more Tike human skin than it did like shoe-leather; the black around my eyes like strokes of charcoalmy lips had the unnatural red ! of scarlet ink. I walked up to the glass and viewed my artificial countenance with a feeling of repulsion. It reminded me of some execrable portrait done in water colours. I hurried into a store and bought a veil, with which I covered the beautification. Then I went straightway home and scrubbed my .face till all trace of foreign substance was gone. My experience convinced me of the utter folly of paint as a beautifier, for by no possibility can it be put on without showing exactly what it is. Dry powder, and mighty little of that, is all that I advise.any woman to put on her face. If nature has not imparted beauty of complexion there is no use trying to make up the deficiency by artifice. It is far better to turn our ingenuity towards wearing our hair becomingly, for in that direction a great deal of comeliness may be commanded, But let pigments al6ne, unless you are content to be pretty in a ghastly kind of way and at the sacrifice of all outward indications'of warm flesh and blood.