Sunday 18 September 2011

The Modern Girls Beauty Book - Sculpt Your Way to Beauty

Hi, guys! or should that be Salut les gars! (yes, I went to France!) I hope you are all having wonderful weekends! I'm back from my lovely relaxing holiday and thought that while I spend my weekend putting away all my holiday stuff, sort through all my photos and battling with the slowly decreasing pile of washing and rapidly increasing pile of ironing, It would only be fair to pop by to give you the next chapter of 'The Modern Girls Beauty Book'.

So I hope you Gal's are ready for the next instalment from our acerbic-tongued 30's Beauty expert Miss Cross.  Today's Chapter is all about making and using face masks and facial massage...


 
The Modern Girls Beauty Book
 By Beryl M Cross (1938)
CHAPTER II
SCULPT YOUR WAY TO BEAUTY
FACIAL MASKS
            A facial mask is an excellent thing for smoothing away lines. Clearing the skin, and tightening up the contours of the face. It depends on the state of your skin what kind of mask you should use, and how often you should use one.
            If you are in the early twenties, then, expect for a mask once every few months when your skin looks as if it needs it, you should need only an occasional dabbing with milk. Dab iced milk on the face; leave to dry – keeping face still while the milk is on – and you will find that it has a very faint tightening effect. After five or ten minutes this can be rinsed off with lukewarm water, to which a few drops of toilet Benzoin or a little toilet oatmeal has been added.
            There are some excellent masks, quite reasonably priced on the market, that the girl in her late twenties and over may use.
            No mask, however, can better an egg mask.
This really means making yourself into as good an imitation of an omelet as you can.

EGG MASK
            Separate the white and the yolk of an egg, and beat them very little, the white somewhat more than the yolk.
  • Now clean your face and then apply a face flannel rung out in quite warm water to the face. 
  • Apply white of egg all over the face, paying special attention to the lines around the eyes; when this is dry apply another coating, and when this has dried then a coating of yolk. 
  • Leave this on for about 20 minutes and then rinse off with lukewarm water. 
  • Lightly dab over your face with your cleansing milk and make up as usual. 
  • You will find that your skin has a delightfully fine texture. 
  • An egg mask every week, if you are in your late twenties and over, will keep your skin lovely. For those in the middle twenties, just the white, very slightly whipped and one coating applied, should be sufficient.  
  • Of course skins do vary, and you may find a woman of thirty-five with a very firm contour and a girl of twenty-eight who needs more attention. But that can be left to your own discretion.
Another light mask that can be used with effect is fuller’s earth and milk, or fine oatmeal mixed in to a paste with milk.

HONEY MASK
            Then there is the honey mask, which, as honey is the one thing that does not age, is supposed to impart some of its ageless qualities to the skin. The honey is just spread on perfectly clean skin, left for twenty minutes or so, and rinsed off with lukewarm water, to which a little toilet oatmeal has been added. But be very careful that you bind your hair well away from your face, for this is a sticky job!
Image Source : Time Life

HOW TO GIVE YOURSELF A FACIAL
            A facial once a week is the ideal, and that should not be difficult to manage. For the business girl, of course, Sunday is the ideal day, because you have more time to relax. In any case, if you really feel that once a week cannot be managed, take one evening every ten days, or two weeks.
  • First of all, put all the things you are going to need on a small table, on the dressing-table, or on a shelf in the bathroom.
  • Make yourself comfortable in a dressing-gown that you can keep right away from the neck. 
  • Tie back your hair with a ribbon, or headband, or fold a handkerchief corner wise, and fasten round your head and pin at the back of the neck. 
Image Source : Time Life
  • Cleanse your face thoroughly with cream, milk, or soap and water, according to your skin type.  
  • Now press on a face flannel wrung out in warm water. Spread skin food over your face, and over the palms of your hands. Let it remain a moment or two, and then massage your face with firm sculpturing movements as given farther on in to this chapter. 
  • When you have done this, wipe off the cream with facial tissues, keeping your movements upwards. 
  • Now cut a strip of butter muslin, about six inches wide, fold it, and putting it under your chin, tie it on top of you head as tightly as you can bear it. 
  • Cut another Handkerchief of butter muslin, and after cutting holes for eyes, lay it over your face. 
  • Get a scent spray bottle filled with skin tonic over the butter muslin. Put down the scent bottle within your reach, and press the damp butter muslin to your face.
  • When dry, sprinkle on some more skin tonic, again press to your face, and rest about five minutes, or of course, longer if you feel inclined. 
  • Remember, it is hardly necessary to warn you, to keep your eyes closed while you apply the skin tonic, or it will sting.
That is a good facial. If you want to make it a facial de luxe, slap your face with cotton wool soaked in milk and rinse off, before applying the butter muslin and skin tonic. Give yourself a gentle patting over the lines with a patter, and put, and put swabs of cotton wool soaked in eye lotion over your eyes while you are lying down.
After this, get up, remove the butter muslin. Leave any skin tonic on the skin to dry naturally, and then make up.

SCULPT YOUR WAY TO BEAUTY
A few words on the important subject of massage. Lovely ladies have no lines, Nor have they drooping tired skins, which are caused more often than you may realize by destructive emotions… a downward droop of the mouth, a discontented look in the eyes.
It’s all very well to talk of people having “laughter-lines,” but actually this very rarely happens. Laughter and vivacity exercise the facial muscles, and the lift of the face is upwards, therefore laughing people usual have much younger looking faces than those folk whose faces are still and disagreeable.
Now when you massage yourself, you have got to know what you want to do with your face. You must imagine that you are smoothing away the lines and lifting the tired look. A little imagination in beauty care helps you to set a goal and to achieve it. You are out to “sculpt” your face the way you want it to go. Therefore you pass the hands with an upward movement, because the line must be upward, and take the fingers mostly across lines, to smooth them away. Here are the movements –
1. Start with the first two fingers of either hand at each side of the nose and gently pass these back up to the ears with an upward movement towards the temples, the thumbs following under the jaw-line. Do this ten times.
2. Put the first and second fingers of your right hand at the left side of your chin, and with the first two fingers of your left hand, describe a circular movement over any nose-to-mouth line there may be. Repeat with changing hands.
3. Put the first two fingers of your left hand on the right cheek just under the eye, to keep the skin firm, and draw the first two fingers of your right hand across the lines, from under the middle of the eye towards the temples. Repeat with the other hand under the left eye.
4. Put all four fingers of each hand so that they meet in the middle of your forehead. Then hold the skin firm with one hand, while you draw the fingers of the other back to the temple. Repeat ten times then change hands, holding the other side firm, while you move the other hand.
5. Smear the backs of your hands with skin food and draw first the back of one hand from underneath the chin along to the back of the ear, each time you change hands, giving a little firm smack under the chin with the back of the hand.
6. Give little gentle pinches round the mouth, very carefully along the top of the cheeks under the eyes, and along the jaw-line to behind the ears. Fill your cheeks with air, and massage in a rotary movement from just below the mouth to just above it.
This, the corners of the mouth, is one of the places where you will most need your patter, as patting “plumps out” the cheeks and gets rid of nose-to-mouth lines. Just pat on and across these lines when you have removed your skin food.
This is a simple routine that anyone can follow.


The products you will need on your dressing table:

Butter Muslin:  Find it here, essentially a loose weave fabric like medical gauze.

Fuller’s Earth: My first reaction to reading this was 'what! you want me to put cat litter on my face!!!' But after doing a bit of Goggling, I found out that it has many other uses other than lining kitties litter tray. It can be bought as a cream or as a powder and seems to be just the ticket for many a skin complaint, due to its deep cleansing properties. Another face mask recipe I found whilst researching is to mix two tablespoons of Fuller's earth with and one egg white and apply as a mask every day to rid your face of Acne!

Toilet Oatmeal: Essentially this is oatmeal (who would have guessed:) ) which was chopped into smaller pieces than the breakfast verity, So I guess whacking some in the food processor/blender would do the trick! 

(Now if you google Toilet Oatmeal, and I realise there is no reason why you should! You will find nothing relating to a beauty product, but some very strange things on youtube...there is a whole channel for flushing food down the toilet?? Just bizarre!!)


Wendy x