TAX ON COSMETICS

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 421, 30 April 1937, Page 3

TAX ON COSMETICS

SOURCES OF REVENUE Let Beauty Pay The Bill Bill It was apparently anticipated in some quart-ers in England, that in his search for new revenue to meet the Rearmament Bill, the Chancellor for •he Exchequer might impose a tax on cosmetics. In connection with this suuggestion an English writer says that when every woman in every bus or every tram takes 'the opportunity for repairing any dampge to her make-up; when millions of lips are other than their natural red; when hairdressers and manicurists are booming as never before; and when a great deal of money is to be demanded of a long-suffering nation—then it would seem <that a non-pro-ductive industry might be called upon to help meet the Bill. Most people think of make-up as concerning rouge, powder, and lipstick alone. Most people think of hairdressing as consisting permanent, ly of permanent waves. But this is only the surface view of the trade with which they are associated. Millions of words are written every day concerning the exact kind of complexion it behoves the fashionable woman ,

—and are we not tall fashionable today?—to wear at given hours of the day. She can change her rouge almost hourly, and with it her powder and lipstick. She can put on more or less black on the eyebrows or under the eyes, taccording to the occasion And for -the means by which these transfornuations take place there are innumerable charming little boxes, business-like looking tins, containers, the price of which even exceeds* that of the special complexion aids. Eyebrows and Eyelashes. Further, the necessary shaving of the eyebrows of film stars to prevent shadows has involved the shaving of the eyebrows of everyone and the replacing of them by a literally penciL led line which may reach as far as the hair, according to the expression desired. And if the eyebrows' are sbav.

ed off to avoid anything so barbarous as nature, eyelashes are now being put on, each being stuck separately, so that the fashionable woman can vie with any doll or /any chocolatebox portrait with the length of her 9yelashes. It is true that washing becomes an indulgence to be avoided wd that the pillow is strewn with eyelash* | every morning, un-til at the end of a fortnight it all has to be done over 'again. But no matter. Eyelashes alone at the moment would probably bring in a handsome 'tax. Nails also are not simply manicured, as of old. They are painted different colours for eiach event of the day. Sports dress takes one type of nail; silver or gold is not out of the way; blood red represents- the passion which it is desirable to suggest towards dinner-time. And, as most people have ten fingers it here may be some forty different paintings' to do in a day, or 280 dabs of varnish or colour, or both, used in ia week.

Hair is a preoccupation. It has to fit different hats, as regards both cut and colour. Colouring i£> preferably anything but one’s own. Hair may be lacquered into place; it may even be worked upon to stimulate nature. Whatever is done to it two or three times a day, it takes special unguents to produce the effect, and little expensive bottles of these might well produce a handsome tax result.

It is not as though taxation would bring about the cessation of every kind of make-up. Nature would not some into its own ag easily as that, and most people feel beautiful in proportion as they hiave expended their substance on cosmetics. Also cosmetics are the hope of a larger proportion of the world. Most,- of us do not really think as 1 well of our looks as all that, and in cosmetics is the panacea which some diay in the distant future -may turn us out as beauties and in the long meantime at least make us> look as much as possible like the rest of the herd.