Newspapers / Zebulon Record (Zebulon, N.C.) / Dec. 31, 1937, edition 1 / Page 13
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/ By Grace Grandville of society, that gawdy young creature bom of the Jazz Age before the crash. She was known as the Flapper. They said she put the sin in syncopation. And they squirmed to see how many nice little girls imitated her blatant sex appeal. Flapper wasn’t a new word when F. Scott Fitz gerald started publicizing it. It had appeared in the play "His Majesty Bunker Bean” and even before that Englishmen sometimes called their kid sisters flap pers. But the flapper became a type only after Fitz gerald wrote about her and Russell Patterson sketched her. Mr. Patterson denies creating her likeness. He says he drew her from life Intact, rolled stockings, above-the-knee skirts, short frizzled hair, beauty spots and all. Well, the flapper grew up or passed out or some thing. And now will you look at the slicker whom Patterson presents as her 1937 prototype. He drew this one from life, too. Observe how much more worldly wise she Is. The lines of her dress cling, but her throat is swathed high. Her waist is smaller and her hips narrower than the flapper’s were. Her hair is smoothed back, rolled under and crowned by a tower ing, cock-eyed edifice that her older sister would never have recognized as a hat. Her eyebrows have a sophis ticated arch and her mouth has gone Hollywood. So, in a manner of speaking, has the man who drew her, with his tongue in his cheek. He has a contract with Paramount to devote his artistic talents to making motion pictures. The contrast between his two sketches is a laugh at our expense, girl friends. It shows how amusingly much our ideas have changed since yesterday about how to make ourselves beautiful and provocative. Maybe his ideas on the subject will be valuable. After all, when an artist says that feminine beauty is a trick, it’s worth listening further. And that's what be saya S HE WAS always a pain in the neck to the conservative element "The kind of beauty which matters more than a moment —the kind which gets a girl places—is the trick of knowing how to present her assets in the most favorable manner. She has to arrest the eye first, yes. But then she must parade her personality to whet the appetite and hold the interest. «T 1 ’VE HAD models whose features and figures were so classically perfect I couldn’t take my eyes off them when I first saw them. In a week I couldn’t bear to look at them. The explanation is illustrative. There was nothing behind the shell of beauty, no animation to light and vary it. In a very little while it became tiresome. Sameness bores even when it is gorgeous sameness. “Those girls were too sure they were beautiful. It was the most unfortunate thing that could have hap pened to them. A little doubt is good for a girl. It makes her w r ork to increase her natural endowment. She thinks she'd better make an effort to be charming and cover up any possible deficiencies. The trouble with most perfect beauties, I find, is that they’re placidly sure of themselves. They decide at an early age what the mirror shows them is enough all by itself. They believe all they will ever have to do is show that lovely blank to everybody and everybody will promptly reel with admiration. Some people do tem porarily. Only the attraction doesn’t last. "Beauty which isn’t backed up by a conscious effort to please, to be interesting, amusing, entertain ing, sympathetic and so forth, soon leaves those who gaze upon it cold. Beauty unaccompanied by a little brain work does the same thing. And if cold beauty alone isn’t enough for an artist, who is supposed to worship it, figure out how far it comes from being enough for the average man.” Sex appeal depends more on the hands than most women realize, says Patterson. Some girls put a cer tain zing into the simplest gesture which makes It attractive. Others lift their hands like so much dead weight or muddle arflund with them meaninglessly. Men, says Patterson, notice things like that much more than details of appearance about which women fuss .so much. How about practicing your finger exer cises? And you better go right out and get yourself a good manicure. He believes a great many styles in beauty as well as clothes are set on school and college campuses. It is a reasonable conclusion. School communities are close-knit and young humanity resembles the sheep in playing Follow the Leader. Here and there a girl with more imagination than the rest does something different in the way of self-adornment. In no time at all hundreds of other girls are following her lead. Eventually by the process of imitation the idea has spread and is Influencing femininity in general. So if you would know future trends in advance watch the youngsters. Neither the smart magazines devoted to beauty culture nor the experts of Holly wood brought back natural eyebrows, although both sources have taken the credit. School girls did it, to be different. TT* HE MOST interesting beauty news of the moment, according to the gentleman who is conducting today’s lesson, is that for the first time since anybody can remember natural brown hair is the favorite. He recently judged a beauty contest and the winner had natural medium brown hair Such a thing never happened before in the history of beauty con tests. Blonds, redheads and occasionally ladies with raven tresses formerly dipped all the gravy. And blonds had the edge on the others. At last plain hair is coming into its own. Russell Patterson, artist, reminds brown halted girls that they should consider themselves lucky in more ways than one. They have so much more lee way in the colors with which they can becomingly drape themselves. Then he looks to the future, and he is unhappy. He says it is inevitable that economic competition and the requirements of transportation—subways, for in stance —will force women to adopt some form of the trouser for daily wear. However, he hopes it will be a modified form, because his artistic Judgments tells him women were not built for trousers!
Zebulon Record (Zebulon, N.C.)
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Dec. 31, 1937, edition 1
13
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