Mundane Musings Plain Be Blowed!

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 133, 26 August 1927, Page 5

Mundane Musings Plain Be Blowed!

It was, I think, a Frenchman who first said that there are no ugly women, but only women who do not know how to look pretty—and really there is a tremendous amount of truth in this remark. For hardly anyone, yoy know, is born so plain that nothing can be done about it. But the trouble is, most of us get far too accustomed to our personal appearance. We look in the long glass and imagine that the reflection that greets the eye is inevitable. That is a great mistake. Any woman can transform herself out of all knowledge if she changles her style! Take, for instance, the rather colourless girl whom one sees on every hand. She has not much money to spend and she lacks self-confidence. The poor wench cuts no ice. But suppose she ran amok one day and came out in vivid garments, plucked her eyebrows and reddened her mouth —would she look better or worse? She would, at any rate, look more interesting, and that is half the secret of success. It is an interesting theme, this, of the plain woman who may blossom into a charming one, and several plays have been written round the dowdy moth of a wife who, spurred on by rage or jealousy, turns herself into a butterfly by sheer strength of will, because she is determined to make her husband regret his former neglect and mend his ways. What a stage heroine does in two acts could be done in a couple of weeks by many a real woman, if she had the incentive and would only put her mind to it! So do not, if you are plain, get depressed about your appearance, for depression will ruin your looks. Pull yourself together, and then pull yourself to pieces, and you will have reason to be quite pleased with yourself. “But I am so depressingly ordinary,” you say to yourself. Well—do you ever look nice? “Yes —in such and such a hat or in my red frock or my dressing gown,” you may reply. There you have the answer to the problem, if you only knew it, for if

you look nice in one thing you can look nice in everything—if you would only get things which suited you. But perhaps you have to say: “No. 1 never look nice in anything, day or night.” Well, then is the moment to be drastic and to pull yourself to pieces with a vengeance and all your heart. It may need courage to throw your corsets into the ashbin, to Eton crop your hair, reduce your weight, adopt a different diet, and hundle up all your garments and give them away to the astonished maid! But let her have them. It is better you should go forth in a blanket with a hole cut for your head than that you should continue to wear the clothes you have worn day by day when you were plain Jane. For you are not going to be plain any more. You are going to be the ugly duckling who turns into a swan To do this you must take no half measures, you must throw overboard all your former notions of adornment strike out a new line, even if it means giving up almost everything else, and dyeing your hair pea green—remakr yourself. Find your good points—you must have some—a nice smile or a good pair of eyes, or a figure that could be bullied into shape. And having found them out —go to it! * GOLF CLUB BALL AT TE AWAMUTU The Te Awamutu Town Hall was comfortably filled on Wednesday evening, when the Te Awamutu Golf Club held its annual ball. The hall had been effectively decorated with the club colours (saxe blue and vieux rose) balloons, paper butterflies and other novelties. The floor had been specially prepared. and excellent music was supplied by Patterson’s Orchestra. The duties of M.C. were capably carried out, and the supper was particularly dainty.

FORGIVENESS The axiom, “To know all is to forgive all,” is so familiar that it has almost ceased to have any meaning. Yet suddenly a door opens, and one sees for a moment into the heart and mind of another and is humbled to the dust for hasty judgments and harsh criticisms. But surely if we knew all there would b no virtue in forgiving all. The difficulty with which most of us have to contend is that imagination and sympathy, a sense of justice and a love of fair dealing, fail when they are needed, and we judge superficially, and pass sentence without seeking to discover below the surface the only facts which are of value. The world would be far more wonderful and its people nobler if we could think that many things that annoy us in those with whom we are thrown are symptoms of some hidden mental trouble. Instead of being offended or insulted by a hasty answer

or a blank look, the really thoughtful person who looks below the surface would take for granted that the one who has offended does not mean to be rude or unkind, but that he or she is distracted by a tumult of the mind. One is stricken with remorse to find that someone of whose conduct we have been critical is bravely trying to hide intense pain, physical or mental, and to endure in silence. Anxiety, strain, sorrow and even hope deferred account for lapses, for apparent slights. For the most part we are poor, imperfect creatures, and we seldom seek for the hidden motive. Doctors probe for the reason for physical conditions. Laymen, such as ourselves, see only results, which we imagine to be unrelf d facts. What a change would come over the world if in a blinding flash we could see the hidden motives for conduct, catch a glimpse of the little tragedies, the griefs, the fears which are veiled by a decent reticence, by self-control, by courage, by the instinct that prompts the brave to suffer alone whether physical agony, the anguish of murdered faith, or hopes for the future smashed to atoms.