Use your Saturdays to collect yourself to restore order to your mind, your body and your belongings.
All the things your do from the moment you wake up until you shut your eyes at night form a pattern of your life, your self-portrait to the world. You are simply the sum of the million little things you do every day. So the way to change yourself is to check off bad habits and break them.
Stop picking on yourself:
Some of the things you say to yourself you would never say to someone you love. Be kind to yourself and stop comparing your looks to somebody else's. Learn how to look like yourself, but your very best, individual self. Analyse and study your face and body for their own special assets and then polish yourself from top to toe.
Do you flounder through life? Are you the kind of person who is always having accidents? Do you let things "just happen" to you, lose interest, or your grip or your man?
Coordinate yourself, keep your body in such poised and perfect alignment that it takes you beautifully through life. Keep your mind in balance too. Plan your life, your time, your budget, your pleasure and your duties, so that you make things happen as you want them to.
Do you get slipshod about being clean, clean, clean ,clean? There is no basis for beauty not even for self respect except scrupulous cleanliness.
Follow your cleansing regime religiously.
Do you gobble heavy, rich foods when your skin and your figure tell you you shouldn't?
Eat with sense, follow your diet, count your calories.
Do you let careless elimination habits (that's having a poo to you and me)cloud up your skin and vitality?
Try to establish regular daily hours for your body's elimination habits. Drink enough water if you're not regular - 6 to 8 glasses between meals - but no more.
Do you wave dry, wrinkled paws?
Moisturise your hands at every opportunity, after carefully drying every finger, every inch of palm, use lotion, keep a bottle in your bathroom, by the kitchen sink, on your nightstand... A daytime glove habit keeps your hands protected summer or winter (plus looks super elegant!)
Are you armadillo elbowed?
Oil a lot, at night, before baths. In the tub take a scrubbing brush and soap to work off tough outer skin. Dip elbows into halves of lemons after you've pumiced and oiled them.
Have you got fresh breath?
Even your best friend won't tell you if you smell bad, but stinky breath makes a girl about as uncharming as a girl can be. Do your proper tooth brushing after every meal or munch hard fruit and raw vegetables to clean the teeth. Keep a moutwash in you desk drawer at work, see a dentist regulardy and don't specialise in high smelling food or drink. (Now if only she had given advice on how to let somebody know they have a vile breath without upsetting them...)
How about BO?
Keep clean, fresh and fuzzfree, use deodorants and antiperspirants.
Do you allow underarm or leg fuzz to grow?
Don't! Shave regularly, at least two or three times a week and don't think stockings are going to hide unshaved legs, it's like putting your legs under glass.
Do you live with messy dressing table, bureau, drawers?
Tidy up your table tops, put underwear, stockings, gloves, scarves, bags and sweaters in proper drawers. Put sachets, scented lining paper or emptied perfume bottles in your bureau. At work keep a small space in the back of your drawer for your cosmetics, moutwash and comb.
Date Night
What do you do when you have got a date at eight but you are exhausted after shopping all day? (I hope you sneaked a look at yourself in the shop window - are you a better looking girl than a week ago? Did you have a posture so regal you could have put those parcels on the top of your head and carried them right back home?)
But your feet ache, your hair is stringy, you are tired all over and there's just an hour to go.
Start from the feet, rub and massage deeply with olive oil and then a quick shower or do a contrast bath like Betty Grable (picture above) used to do, stinging hot and then icy cold sprays, scrubbing with a brush and massaging.
Set your hair in cologne, it dries quickly and makes your hair smell lovely to the man you are dancing with.
Cream Clean your face, long and thoroughly, smoothing away the tired lines, then tone and lubricate (that's moisturise to you and me)
Make eye lotion pads and lay them on your lids (cucumber slices, teabags, table spoons that have been in the fridge for a bit or just a simple gel eye mask will also do the trick).
Now the Hollywood Slant, put those feet up and massage them if they are still giving you trouble, use a menthol foot cream. Before you put your shoes on sprinkle shoes and feet with talcum powder. Go limp, see black and lie there for 15 minutes with blood flowing to recharge your face.
Now then, refreshed and bright eyed, remove the cream from your face, put on your make up and perfume the pulse spots of your body, brush out your hair, slip into your date dress and shoes, comb your hair into shape, blot on some lipstick, check your reflection in the mirror and go and have fun.
