Part 7

Don’t be a copycat. Don’t understudy the mannerisms of another girl just because she happens to be popular. Imitation airs and graces have about as much sparkle to them as imitation diamonds. Besides, you never can make a go of it. You can’t put on another woman’s characteristics any more than you can her clothes, and make them seem as if they were your own birthday suit. They are always a grotesque misfit. Charm has to be made to order and cut to the measurement of the individual. That is why one girl may do bold, outrageous things and everybody only shrugs his shoulders and laughs at her, while another girl is sent to Coventry for not doing half so much. That is why some women always have a masculine shoulder offered for them to weep upon, while men tell other women not to be fools whenever they shed a tear.

So the trick is for the girl to find out what her own class is and qualify for the blue ribbon in that instead of trying to force her way into a bunch of prize winners where she doesn’t belong and where she will be thrown out by the judges. Yet many girls make the mistake of doing this very thing. A quiet, serious-minded, mouse-like little girl observes that some gay and dashing girl, who has quicksilver in her veins and over whose lips laughter bubbles as spontaneously as a mountain spring, is much admired and sought after and is the life of the party wherever she goes.

“Aha! Vivacity is what makes a girl popular,” says the demure one to herself. “I will also be sprightly, and merry, and make a hit.”

So she tries to imitate the high spirits of the gay girl, but she can’t do it. Her home-made vivacity is as flat as home-brew beer beside imported champagne. Instead of being bright, she is loud. Instead of laughing, she giggles. Instead of being sprightly, she jumps around like a monkey on a stick. She is so afraid she won’t talk enough that she chatters incessantly, and instead of amusing people she bores them to death.

Yet the very girl who is such a failure as a live wire could have charmed every one if only she had given a master performance of girlish sweetness, and gentleness, and quietness. She could have been a great success if she had remained the shrinking violet that nature made her, but she was a rank failure as a gaudy sunflower.

Then there is the big, Amazonian woman who tries to be cute and cunning, because she sees some baby doll getting the glad hand when she curls up on sofas, and sits on one foot, and perches on the edges of tables, and who only succeeds in looking like a performing elephant instead of a playful kitten when she performs these stunts. And there is the woman without an inch of funny bone in her whole anatomy who tries to tell good stories because she sees some jolly woman raconteur set the table in a roar at dinner parties, and who wonders why people burst into tears instead of into peals of mirth when she recites her carefully memorized jokes.

They couldn’t fill other women’s rôles, yet the big woman could have made us worship her as a goddess if she had stayed on her pedestal instead of coming down and trying to do double somersaults in the ring. We would have listened eagerly enough to intelligent talk from a serious thinker who didn’t try to be funny, for Heaven knows we get tired enough of amateur jokesmiths who think we want to be perpetually tickled in the ribs. Believe me, girls, there is much wisdom in the old proverb that advises the shoemaker to stick to his last. We are most admirable when we are what nature made us with the aid of a few little arts and embellishments to throw the original model up into higher relief. So I counsel you to make the most of yourselves. Abandon the foolish attempt of trying to make yourselves over into a poor copy of some woman who is admired. Charm isn’t standardized. It has a million forms, and every woman should illustrate her own particular version of it.

After all what we call charm is largely a matter of personality and the girl who wishes to cultivate that elusive something that we call personality does well to pay much attention to her dress. This sounds like superfluous advice to the sex whose brains are mostly cut on the bias and shirred in the middle, and which is more concerned over the hang of a skirt than it is over the state of its immortal soul. It is not too much to say that three-fourths of women’s thoughts and interest in life and heart-felt desires and envies are concentrated upon clothes, and the marvel always is that they can put so much effort on a subject and get such poor results.

For the great majority of women only think of dress in terms of fashion, and they follow the mode of the moment as sheep follow their leader over a wall. They wear blue or purple, pink or green, short skirts or long skirts, tight ones or full ones, without any reference to their complexions or whether their ankles are sylphlike or like the legs of a piano, or whether they are living skeletons, or have featherbed figures. The result is that thousands upon thousands of women look as if their worst enemy had bought their clothes, and their hats are a premeditated insult to their faces. But they go their way, serene and happy, having done the worst they could by themselves, but blissful in the knowledge that they are wearing what everybody else is wearing. Apparently it never enters the average woman’s head that by clothing herself in the feminine uniform of the hour she makes herself indistinguishable in the mob, or that she could call attention to herself by breaking away from it, and dressing to suit her own particular type. Still less does it occur to her that her clothes offer her an invaluable mode of self-expression, and that by them she can emphasize her good points and camouflage her defects.

Yet every moving picture, every play she sees, offers a girl an object lesson in the psychology of clothes that she does not heed. She never asks herself why the innocent, trusting maiden, too artless for her own good, always wears a white muslin and a blue sash; why the ingenue is always a mass of fluffy ruffles; why the betrayed heroine always wears a slinky black dress; why the adventuress is clothed in crimson and spangles; why the vamp invariably wears long jade earrings, and a quart of beads, and very little else.

Yet astute stage managers have found that the surest way to make an audience visualize a woman in a certain way is to have her dress the part. A girl might, of course, be as innocent in a crimson dress as a white one; a woman might be as heartbroken in a pink silk and lace negligee as she is in a bedraggled black alpaca, but it would take a long argument to convince us of it, and we wouldn’t weep nearly as freely over her woes as we do when we get an eyeful of her in the clothes that tell us at once just what a poor, innocent, persecuted heroine she is.

Surely this should suggest to every girl the wisdom of retiring to her closet, and having a heart-to-heart session with her wardrobe, and a vivisection party with her character, and thereby try to find out how to dress her soul as well as her body, so as best and most effectively to press-agent her individuality, so to speak.

If she is of the bold and dashing type, let her flaunt herself like a sunflower in daring costumes and flaming colors, but if she is of the quiet and gentle sort, soft fabrics, chiffons and laces and pastel shades belong to her, and make her look like the traditional modest violet that every man dreams of securing as a wife. Let the girl who is flat-chested and athletic rejoice in her sport clothes. That is her note, and brings out a certain piquant boyishness which is her greatest attraction. But let the girl who is plump, with gracious curves, make the most of her femininity by decking herself out in the frilliest frocks that she can find. Each will lose in charm if she swaps her plumage for the other’s.

Dangling ornaments, floating ribbons and jingling bracelets belong to the gay and foolish and frivolous, but they detract from the dignity of the stately, thoughtful, serious-minded woman. A tailor-made suit is equal to a certificate of virtue, and when a girl is applying for a job a plain, dark-colored suit will do more to land her the position than a gilt-edged reference. Nobody ever believes that a girl in a low-necked, no-sleeved frock can ever be a competent business woman. She doesn’t look it. Every woman knows that her eyes seem twice as blue if she has a blue lining to her hat, and that she can turn a spotlight on her every freckle by wearing a spotted dress. In the same way she can bring out her characteristics by the way she dresses. If she wishes to emphasize her cuteness, she can do it by dressing like a baby doll. If she wishes to be thought a goddess, she can add to her divinity by long-trailing robes. If she wishes to be thought a good sport and treated as a pal by men, sport clothes are hers, while if domesticity is her long suit, she can turn the trick by wearing ruffled little white aprons at home. So study your type, girls, and dress the part, if you want to make the most of the attractions with which nature has endowed you.

III

THE ORDINARY WOMAN

I wish that I had the distributing of some of the Carnegie medals for heroes. I would give one to just the Ordinary Woman. It is true that she never manned a lifeboat in a stormy sea, or plunged into a river to save a drowning person. It is true that she never stopped a runaway horse, or dashed into a burning building, or gave any other spectacular exhibition of courage.

She has only stood at her post thirty, or forty, or fifty years, fighting sickness and poverty and loneliness, and disappointment so quietly, with such a Spartan fortitude that the world has never noticed her achievements. Yet, in the presence of the Ordinary Woman, the battle-scarred veteran, with his breast covered with medals signifying valor, may well stand uncovered before one braver than he.

There is nothing high and heroic in her appearance. She is just a commonplace woman, plainly dressed, with a tired face and work-worn hands—the kind of woman that you meet a hundred times a day upon the street without ever giving her a second glance, still less saluting her as a heroine. Nevertheless, as much as the bravest soldier, she is entitled to the cross of the Legion of Honor for distinguished gallantry on the Battlefield of Life.

Years and years ago, when she was fresh and young, and gay, and light-hearted, she was married. Her head, as is the case with most girls, was full of dreams. Her husband was to be a Prince Charming, always tender and considerate and loving, shielding her from every care and worry. Life itself was to be a fairy tale.

One by one the dreams fell away. The husband was a good man, but he grew indifferent to her before long. He ceased to notice when she put on a fresh ribbon. He never paid her the little compliments for which a woman’s soul hungers. He never gave her a kiss or a caress, and their married life sank into a deadly monotony that had no romance to brighten it, no joy or love to lighten it.

Day after day she sewed and cooked and cleaned and mended to make a comfortable home for a man who did not even give her the poor pay of a few words of appreciation. At his worst he was cross and querulous. At his best he was silent, and would gobble his food like a hungry animal and subside into his paper, leaving her to spend a dull and monotonous evening after a dull and monotonous day.

The husband was not one of the fortunate few who have the gift of making money. He worked hard, but opportunity does not smile on every man, and the wolf was never very far away from their door.

Women know the worst of poverty. It is the wife, who has the spending of the insufficient family income, who learns all the bitter ways of scrimping and paring and saving. The husband must present a decent appearance, for policy’s sake, when he goes to business; certain things are necessities for the children; and so the heaviest of all the deprivations fall upon the woman who stays at home and strives to make one dollar do the work of five.

That is the way of the Ordinary Woman; and what sacrifices she makes, what tastes she crucifies, what longings for pretty things and dainty things she smothers, not even her own family guess. They think it is an eccentricity that makes her choose the neck of the chicken and the hard end of the loaf and to stay at home from any little outing. Ah, if they only knew!

For each of her children she trod the Gethsemane of woman, only to go through that slavery of motherhood which the woman endures who is too poor to hire competent nurses. For years and years she never knew what it was to have a single night’s unbroken sleep. The small hours of the morning found her walking the colic, or nursing the croup, or covering restless little sleepers, or putting water to thirsty little lips.

There was no rest for her, day or night. There was always a child in her arms or clinging to her skirts. Oftener than not she was sick and nerve-worn and weary almost to death, but she never failed to rally to the call of “Mother!” as a good soldier rallies to his battle-cry.

Nobody called her brave, and yet, when one of the children came down with malignant diphtheria, she braved death a hundred times, in bending over the little sufferer, without one thought of danger. And when the little one was laid away under the sod, she who had loved most was the first to gather herself together and take up the burden of life for the others.