1929: Beautiful Breasts

This being the first day of 2008 (hard to believe) I thought I would find something to help you with your latest new year's resolutions. I'm sure most of you have resolved to spend more time with family and friends, excercise more, eat better, to earn more money and perhaps travel to exotic locales this coming year. But I wonder, are there any women out there resolving to take better care of a part of our bodies that we often take for granted -- the breasts? The author of Lovely Ladies hopes that you will. After reading this, I think I'll try to do better by them this year.

~~
No woman can have truly womanly beauty without beautiful breasts. If illness or childbirth causes them to droop, don't allow this condition to continue for a single month. And allow no perverted current ideas to cause you to bind or strap them into a semblance of boyish flatness, and thus break down their muscles and delicate tissues.

First, the underdeveloped breasts. Simply massage them in a rotating movement five minutes night and morning, with lanolin or cocoa butter, all that they will absorb. Dust with talcum. Always mix a few drops of tincture of benzoin with lanolin or cocoa butter for whitening.

Next, breasts that sag because of illness. Watch this particularly after operations, after childbirth, and after nursing a child. They must have a massage with diluted alcohol, then a good brisk slapping with a folded towel wrung out in cold water, then the upward and rotating massage with the lanolin or cocoa butter, unless they are already very large. Never under any circumstances attempt to reduce your breasts with epsom salts or reducing creams or bandages, or rubbing contraptions which are beneficial to other parts of the body.

Continue these ministrations until your breasts are beautiful, and return to the measures if your breasts tend ever to lose that beauty.
~~

Important Disclaimer: This is originally from the 1920s, so this advice may therefore be a bit unsound. You might want to confer with your doctor before rubbing something like "tincture of benzoin" (whatever that is) or any other product that sounds funny and is probably not readily found in your local drugstore onto your chest. And hey -- don't blame Miss Abigial if your breasts burst into flame with the use of epsom salts or reducing creams. This is meant for entertainment purposes only!

1929: Personal Hygiene

Wooweee is the D.C. area hot this weekend! Even with the mid-afternoon hours wasted away napping in the central air conditioning (not even the dogs want to go outside), it's been pretty unbearable. And in the short time I did spend outside, well, I'll be honest, I've been perspiring quite a bit. What's a girl to do?

Well, this girl of course turned to the books for a little advice on personal hygiene, specifically how to "neutralize body odors." This was found in volume one of Lovely Ladies.

~~
There are so-called deodorants on the market which neutralize body odors. If you have the idea that they are injurious to you, and that by suppressing excess perspiration in a certain place it will only appear somewhere else, then use one of the powder deoderants which neutralize all body odors without in any way suppressing elimination through the pores.

Deodorants, talcum powder, astringents, mouth washes, the proper treatment of the skin areas that are too active in their functions of eliminating waste will remove all possibilities of unpleasant odors. If the area under your arms, for instance, is overactive in its eliminating functions, you can gradually and harmlessly close the pores and make them smaller and consequently less active with the use of a mild astringent after bathing. You can completely neutralize foot odors and in time quite correct any such abnormal condition by bathing them night and morning in a saturated solution of boracic acid and then dusting the powdered boracic acid into them in the place of talcum powder. Of course, you will not have to do this for longer than a week or two at the most, because after the condition is corrected just using the powdered boracic acid instead of talcum will keep them in a healthy condition.
~~

Just as a warning, I wouldn't recommend trying these treatments without doing some further research (I guess boracic acid is still used these days, but seems a bit scary to me). But still, I thought that bit about closing your pores entertaining for a hot summer day.

1923: Toasts (for a Christening)

During some recent interviews, reporters asked if I ever take my own advice. I use most of my books for reference for the Web site and all things related, but there are occasions when they come in handy for personal advice (if friends or other sources can't help out). Such as today, when I was stumped as to whether to get my nephew a christening present, and what. I poked around in the books and found that a book or item of clothing would be ok (I'm not the most religious person so feel odd getting him something with a cross on it).

With that settled, I read a bit more about christening etiquette, and thought you would enjoy the following from the Book of Good Manners. Who knew that toast were appropriate for this occasion?

~~
Toasts---usually offered by one of the godfathers when a momentary lull in the table-talk affords an opportunity---may be proposed in the following terms:

"Let us unite in wishing Master Henry Morton long life, health and happiness!"

or:

"Miss Helen May White---to her health, wealth and happiness!"

Rising and touching glasses the guests may respond:

"Long life and prosperity! Good luck to him! (or her!)"
~~

So, with that in mind:

Let us unite in wishing my nephew Master Manual Antonio Perez III long life, health, happiness, and wealth!

1924: The New Year's Resolution

I hope you had a happy holiday. I've survived Christmas week, with a whirlwind trip to Buffalo, Baltimore, Mineral and then Gainesville, Virginia, to visit family... though it was good to see everyone I'm happy to be back home after all that roadtripping.

I thought I would bring in the New Year with a quote from advice maven Lillian Eichler. She wrote The Customs of Mankind in 1924. It was in this book that I found a little something about the tradition many of us repeat each year, that of the New Year's resolution.

~~

The New Year's resolution undoubtedly had its origin in the notion that the coming year represented an entirely new period of life to the individual, with which he might do as he pleased. What was already passed he put out of his mind, for it was something over which he had no control. But on the coming year he concentrated in earnestness. It spread out like a golden vista before him. It was a period of promise. And he probably found himself making solemn avowals concerning what he would do with his next year of life.

In ancient England it was the custom to clean out the chimneys on New Year's Day so that luck could descend and, of course, remain all year. With us it is customary to speak of "cleaning the slate" (of life) and making good resolutions so that the "slate" will remain clean throughout the year.

The making of New Year's resolutions became quickly a common practice. We can understand why a custom such as this would appeal to the popular fancy and remain throughout the generations. To a mass mind, no period of the year could be more timely for a change in one's mode of living than that period which represents the beginning of the year. A new year--a new life.

~~

Happy 2007!

1924: Road Courtesy

I must be having a mid-life crisis. I became obsessed with a car (yes, a car) and just had to have it. So, traded in my trusty 2001 VW Golf (a moment of silence please) and negotiated a pretty good deal on a silver Madza3 hatchback. So now that I'm out on the road with it, traversing the streets of suburban and urban D.C., I ask my fellow driver to mind your manners while on the road. The following excerpt is from the 1924 booklet Etiquette in Public, written by early twentieth-century etiquette goddess Lillian Eichler.

~~
If courtesy on the road were made traditional, if good nature and good-will were expected of every motorist, is it assuming too much to imagine a time when rudeness on the road will be as rare as it now is in social contact? Certainly when motorists expect courtesy of one another, as guests do in a drawing room, it will be forthcoming.

And after all, by its very nature, conduct on the highway is immeasurably more important than the surface conventions of the drawing room; for here we find that not only are courtesy and kindliness of spirit involved, but life itself. If a man is interested in conversation, witty, agreeable -- we can find it in our hearts to forget that he never rises when a lady enters a room. But if a motorist misses our heel by a fraction of an inch, we cannot forgive him, no matter how agreeable a chap he may be otherwise.
~~

So do you think Ms. Eichler would be pleased with our tailgating, speed-loving, cell-phone talking society today? She probably would have expected more by now, with so many years of driving under our belts since she wrote this.

1926: Hotel Etiquette

The recent trip had a few memorable hotel-related incidents: room mixups due to a reservation booked by one of our party for the wrong night (and subsequent cancellation by the hotel), accusations by an angry Spanish hotel clerk of possible orgies (long, long story there, and JUST NOT TRUE!), and extra fees for air conditioning (much needed by day two of the Spanish heat). So, upon my return I decided to look up some advice for the traveler on hotel etiquette. Probably should have done that before we left, eh?

Here are a few items from Lady Troubridge's The Book of Etiquette (Suffolk, Great Britain: Richard Clay and Company, 1926), that seemed particularly useful (and yes, the original text reads "an hotel"):

~~
At the Hotel
There is a distinct code by which the lady and gentleman must be governed when stopping at an hotel. It is a mistaken idea that one may act as one pleases merely because the hotel is public. It is as important to remember one's social obligations in an hotel as it is in the house of a friend.

Indeed, the hotel is the one place where men and women are most likely to make embarrassing blunders and commit humiliating mistakes. Only by knowing thoroughly the laws of good conduct, as adapted to hotel life, can one expect to move smoothly and with ease through its often puzzling intricacies.

At home, or even when visiting a friend's house, a boor may remain undetected. But the truth appears very quickly in an hotel...

Engaging Rooms in Advance
A wise plan, if time permits, is to engage a room beforehand either by letter, telephone, or telegram. This prevents any possibility of having to leave the hotel because there is no room, always an unpleasant experience for a woman travelling alone, and particularly difficult if she arrives late at night. Forethought in engaging a room beforehand obviates the tiresome possibility of having to go on to another hotel.

Receiving Gentlemen in Hotels
A gentleman calling upon a lady staying in a hotel makes the same inquiry as if he were calling at a private house. "Is Miss So-and-so in?" He then gives his name to the clerk, who will either telephone to the lady's room, or send a servant to inquire if she is in, should there be no installation of bedroom-telephones in the hotel.

The lady should not refuse to see a visitor without offering some excuse. If she is expecting the visitor, she should be waiting in the drawing-room or lounge, having left word at the office where she may be found when her visitor arrives. It is quite permissible for the lady to send a message to the gentleman asking him to wait if she is not ready to see visitors. But if the visit is expected, it is a greater courtesy on the lady's part to be downstairs and ready to receive the gentleman.

For a woman to receive a man in her bedroom at a hotel is to break an important convention, and should never be done. It places both in a false position and is a serious blunder in hotel etiquette.

If a gentleman calls upon a lady at any hotel, whether it is a social or business call, and finds that she is not in, he leaves his card for her with the clerk in the office. He should, however, write her name at the top of the card, as without this indication the card may go to the wrong guest, it being impossible for reception clerks to remember the names of all the guests upon whom cards are left.

In the Public Rooms
It is bad manners to laugh and talk loudly in the public rooms, or to talk loudly in one's bedroom, and equally bad manners to bang doors late at night or make any noise that may disturb other people staying in the hotel.
~~

Now that that's all cleared up, I'm sure the next trip will go much more smoothly!