The Beauty Page: How Do You Keep Your Beauty?

Since the face, the neck, and the upper chest are the parts of your body most exposed to air, light, and dust, it is imperative that you give them the greatest share of your attention in order to preserve their freshness and bloom. And the most important means of preserving them is complete cleanliness.

Every woman has her own method of cleansing her face: some use nothing but cream, and some prefer soap and water above all else. Most likely both methods are necessary and should be used together; but every rule has its exceptions, and if you have grown accustomed to using one of these two methods to the exclusion of the other, and have found that it has preserved your complexion satisfactorily, do not give it up for another. In general, however, it is best to use both methods together at least once a day, before going to bed, and then to resort to one or the other from time to time in the course of the day.

Before Bed

Massage your face, your neck, and the upper part of your chest with a generous quantity of cleansing cream (cold cream), for it dissolves the greater part of the dirt and softens what remains, making it easy to clean off with soap. Then, after a few minutes, wipe off the cream and the dirt dissolved in it with a soft cloth, and begin at once to wash your face with lukewarm water and soap. Let the soap you use be of the pure kind that does not irritate the skin. Work its lather in with your fingertips in a light semicircular motion from below upward, moving from the front toward the outer side of the face. And do not forget to do the same for your neck and upper chest as well. Then wash the soap off completely with lukewarm and then cold water, until you are sure that not a trace of soap remains on your skin.

Dry Skin

If you are one of those with dry skin (which may happen owing to heat or the severity of the weather, and especially between the ages of thirty and forty), use soap only before bed, and in the manner we have described; after that, massage your face and neck with the cream known as tissue cream or nourishing cream or skin food, or any of the creams containing a generous quantity of lanolin, which softens the skin; wait a few minutes, then wipe it off gently, leaving a little of it on your skin until morning. During the day, cleanse your face with cream only.

Oily Skin

There are women whose complexions secrete oily substances in excess, and their trouble is the reverse of the former. The cause of this is usually eating too much fatty food and dishes fried in ghee. If you are of this type of woman, replace some of the fatty foods with vegetables and fruit, and wash your face with soap and water several times a day instead of using cream. And if cream cannot be dispensed with, use cleansing cream instead of cold cream or tissue cream or skin food, and beware of sleeping with any trace of cream on your face.

In some cases it may be advisable to use a soft brush to work the soap over the face a few times a week, on condition that you cut down on its use at once if you find that it has begun to irritate the skin of your face.

Blackheads and Whiteheads

Both result from the accumulation of dirt and dust in the channels of the skin's oils. The difference between them is that the former appear as black points on the surface of the skin, while the latter remain white gatherings beneath the skin. As for blackheads, the most effective means of getting rid of them is to steam the face several times a week with cloths moistened with hot water, then to rub the face well with soap (with the finger), especially around the blackheads, and to wash it thoroughly with lukewarm and then cold water. This method softens the skin to a degree that makes it easy to be rid of these blackheads by a slight pressure of the fingertips or with a special instrument made for the purpose (a blackhead remover). Afterward the face must be washed with cold water and the traces of the blackheads wiped with alum or with the 'egg plaster' (below), to close them and to prevent dirt from gathering in them a second time.

Whiteheads may be harder to be rid of, although in most cases they can be removed by the very method followed above. If you do not succeed in this, it is better that you consult the doctor in the matter, for persisting in removing them with pins and other such means sometimes leads to skin diseases and inflammations you can well do without.

In both cases, a dirham of prevention is better than a qintar of cure; so it is best that you guard yourself against these troubles by always cleansing your face as we have described above.

The Egg Plaster

There are certain methods that assist cleansing in restoring the freshness of the complexion, renewing it, and closing its pores, the most important of which is the 'egg plaster.'

Cleanse your face thoroughly with cold cream; then take a fresh egg, beat it well, and spread it with your fingers over the whole face; then stretch out on the bed without moving until it dries completely. After that, wash your face with lukewarm and then cold water as well.

Chapping

This is the result of dryness of the complexion. Guard against its harm, then, by combating the latter, as was described earlier in the fourth section (Dry Skin). And if exposure to sun and air cannot be avoided, wipe your face with cold cream or skin lotion before you put on powder.

Freckles

Here too a dirham of prevention outweighs tons of treatment, for there is no effective remedy for removing freckles except certain powders and preparations that harm the skin more than the freckles themselves. It is better, then, that you avoid freckles before they appear, by using wide-brimmed hats and parasols and the cream preparations made for protection against the burning rays of the sun.

And if it should happen that freckles appear on your face, their lightening may be helped by using sour lemon, or a few drops of tincture of benzoin in a shallow vessel (a basin) of water. And do not let it trouble you if the freckles do not disappear entirely by this method, for their appearance is, after all, of no great consequence to the beauty of your face.