All girls want a good complexion and a clear skin. The skin and hair are the glories of a healthy woman. Most of you can have this desired state of a clear skin and pure complexion. A good complexion merely means a perfect state of health. A clear skin does not depend on what you apply to it, but what you keep off it.

The clear, satin-like skin, the skin which looks like a transparent piece of silk laid upon a soft cushion of white flesh, and that sheeny skin resembling fine velvet, seen in the pure blonde type of girls, are all the effects of the blood beneath and how that blood is treated by the emotions.

Muddy and contaminating thoughts will cause a muddy skin. Clean and clear thoughts will give you a clear skin. Jealousy and anger will, in time, affect the flow of blood through your tiny skin-veins and give you the appearance of age. Any emotion which causes indigestion will do the same thing. In fact, the state of mind and the manner in which you[52] control your thoughts and temper are reflected in the tone of the skin.

It is during the first few years of menstruating that the girl who does not understand these matters commences to ruin her complexion. While your body is developing, the tiny glands in the skin are undergoing great changes. These changes cause the glands to pour out oily matter, perspiration and other material, all of which naturally bring about a muddy complexion in some girls and redness of the nose, or pimples on the face, in others.

These conditions are natural to the growing girl. The skin is clearing itself of all the little girl’s activities and making ready for the woman’s complexion. It is Springtime with the skin, and this dirt—or what looks like dirt—is the result of all this skin-cleaning. Hair is appearing on certain parts of the body; that almost invisible down which all women possess, is growing on all portions of the body and face. The monthly periods are causing congested blood vessels throughout the whole body and especially the tiny arteries of the skin. Every part of your system is really undergoing a great change and does not get into a state of perfect health until you are eighteen years of age and over. As in all things in which a decided revolution takes place, there is more or less of a disturbance.

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This is the time when a girl commences to worry about her complexion. She frets and becomes anxious about the little spots appearing upon her face. If she has not the proper home advice, but hears all sorts of tales and sees all sorts of things in the school or shop, she soon resorts to the drug stores for a face lotion, powder or cream. She may have been told by an older girl that, “No, I never had anything but a good complexion; you’d better take something for yours, I would,” and much more of this kind of foolish advice.

Some girls go through the period of development without any marked change in their complexion; others, especially brunettes, will have a “broken-out-face,” a hot and oily skin and not infrequently pimples on some part of their bodies. Girls of nervous temperament are apt to have more or less of a spotted complexion during the first few years of menstruation. In all these girls it is more of a sign of good health than otherwise, and if the skin had been left alone,—which it has not, because you have never known the truth,—the quack advertisements of “face creams,” “skin food,” “complexion wafers,” and all the other skin poisons and complexion-destroyers, would never have been put out to swindle girls and women.

Pimples most frequently show on the shoulders and upper arms, and unless the girl knows[54] that these really mean a splendid complexion when she has grown to full womanhood, she worries herself to a point that makes her little life miserable.

This is the point in a girl’s life where she starts in to ruin her complexion forever. She commences to fill in the openings made to let out the fatty and other substances in her skin, by powdering, applying some ointment which keeps these pores closed, or goes to bed with greasy or other injurious “skin foods” upon her face. In fact, she does just what in the end will give her a pasty complexion instead of a clear one. Of course she will later on take to the rouge and powder puffs and have to keep them in constant use until her skin becomes like that of a dried codfish.

Please remember that what you need during the first years of your menstrual life is to allow full freedom for the skin to get rid of all the material your state is producing behind the outer skin. This material must come away if the skin is to be a clear and healthy one. Banking up, stopping this sweating process of the glands of the body, will ruin your complexion in time. You would not attempt to clean a room by sweeping all the dust under the carpet and not expect this dust to be always flying up and making the room dusty and ill-smelling? But you do about the same thing[55] when you do not let all the dirt and dust come away through the spring cleaning of the skin.

The period of your development is the Springtime of your life, and you must expect all kinds of disagreeable feelings and little annoyances to occur during this period.

Each month, just as your menses are coming on, you will find little pimples or some redness on your face, nose or shoulders; perhaps on the arms. You should not want to go to dances or entertainments at these times; in fact you should not; but at no time during your growth into full womanhood should you wear gowns with short sleeves and low necks. For even between the menstrual periods there will be some indications upon the face or skin which tell the story. To hide these little eruptions or redness of the skin you have to apply powder to the neck, shoulders and arms. What are the consequences? The perspiration, due to the heat of the room and the exercise of dancing, keeps the inflammation active under the powder and may cause such pimples that the scars are left forever.

And right here is where you “catch cold.” Drafts, sleeping by an open window or going from a warm room to a colder one do not give you a cold. You may catch cold by doing these things, but the cause is something which has brought about a too rapid loss of heat from[56] the body; such as any wrong way of clothing or underclothing yourself; low-neck dresses for winter; or covering the skin with powder or enamel, through which the perspiration cannot have free play and keep the temperature of the body equal; these are the reasons you “catch cold.”

Those girls you occasionally see with a pitted skin on their faces and shoulders, are those who in all probability prevented the natural grease and other substances from getting out when they were in the first two or three years of their development. They have generally brought about this disagreeable complexion by attempting to dress as full-grown women and covering face, shoulders and backs with some kind of lotion, powder or cream.

The girl who was noted for her fine, soft and smooth skin when she was eight or ten years of age, commences at puberty to have pimples and blackheads on her nose, cheeks and forehead. This being about the time she takes more notice of herself and others around her, these little facial blotches worry her. It is the opening of a new life and much attention is given dress, hair and complexion; to her whole appearance. She brushes and fixes her hair with great care; tries all sorts of experiments. She probably uses the brush of her older sister or one belonging to some of her[57] family, or more frequently it is the common one at school or in the store. She does not intentionally use a dirty brush, nor will she use one which she has the least suspicion has been used by the unclean. But even the brush of her mother or sister carries germs that at this time do much injury to her skin and scalp, because the skin of the forehead is affected by the germs which get to the scalp.

This germ is one which is always to be found in the glands of any person’s scalp or hairy portions of the body. These glands are known as the sebaceous glands. They are the ones which secrete the oily substance that is necessary for the health of the skin and hair. You have enough of the oily substances in your own hair and skin, and it is usually free from germs at this time if you have used only YOUR OWN BRUSH. But the moment you use a brush belonging to some older and full-grown woman you carry to your own scalp these germs. If some of the other germs which are sometimes found upon common brushes get onto your scalp, there is another trouble for you to combat—dandruff. In the first case you simply add oily stuff to your own supply, get over-much of the oil; in the other case, dandruff is piled thick with the fatty material and then comes scalp disease.

This may go on for some time and not[58] noticeably affect you, but it may cause in a few weeks a certain form of eczema about the forehead and even the face. This is a very important matter for all girls and young women to remember. I have shown you that on the approach and for some time after puberty, all the tiny glands of the skin are enlarged and very active, so you can now see that there are hundreds of thousands of little holes for the germs to get into, and they do so from the brushes you are in the habit of using—that is, most of you. When these germs have located themselves upon the scalp, they soon commence to show the fact by giving you a muddy complexion. Sometimes you will be accused of not thoroughly washing your face, so marked is the line around your forehead and neck made by the attack of these germs. When the openings of the glands begin to gape, the effect is not agreeable to you nor to your friends.

The pimples commence to irritate you on account of the increase of the oily substance, and soon you see that little creamy spot, then you or a misguided friend will squeeze it out. Often before this harmful procedure is gone through with, a formation of a little cocoon-like body is formed and then you have blackheads. This is not all dirt as is generally supposed, but a little cylinder filled with fatty stuff, water and some dirt from the skin. If[59] these blackheads keep coming and if you go on squeezing them, if you insist upon covering the pimples with powder or lotion, a real skin disease will be the result. This skin disease we call acne, and it is a difficult and trying one to cure. Never mind all those fetching advertisements in the papers which claim to cure acne in a few applications. Don’t touch such harmful stuff. All these advertised lotions simply COVER UP the symptoms of the disease, drive it further into the skin, and when you finally have to go to a reputable doctor, too much harm has been done for him to save you from being marked for life. Never trifle with advertised cures, go to a well-known doctor, or if you cannot afford to pay a specialist’s price, seek one at the outdoor clinics. There you will receive the same kind and careful treatment you would if you went to his office in an automobile of your own.

What are we to do to keep from having all these disagreeable pimples and their after-effects? Prevent them. You understand; not cure, but prevention; for I want to put you all in a position to keep from having any trouble which needs a CURE in the medical sense.

The first thing to do is to look out for your scalp as soon as you recognize the approach of[60] puberty and for ever after. I do not mean that even a little girl should ever have her scalp neglected, but that you must, as soon as your menstrual time comes, NEVER use any other brush than your own and this must be a new one. No matter how old you are, get a new brush every few months and guard it as you would your jewels or your most precious gift. You should consider a brush for the hair as sacred as the one for your teeth. You surely would not think of brushing your teeth with any old toothbrush which happened to come along; neither should you use any other hairbrush but your own.

And all this is such a simple matter, for whatever you do, wherever you go, whether you attend school, work in an office or store, you can easily carry with you your own hairbrush as you do your own toothbrush. Of course the same rule applies to comb, soap and towel.

The habit some girls have of brushing and combing each other’s hair is all very well if only your brush is used upon your hair, and only upon your hair. As a rule girls take one brush and go over each other’s scalps, thereby contaminating all the scalps; carrying oily matter from head to head. The scalp of a blonde-haired girl is not kept in good condition by the same quality or amount of secretions[61] that a brunette requires; a woman’s scalp that has been neglected will carry to a young woman’s sensitive skin germs which will affect her scalp and complexion, but would not probably affect a middle-aged person. So let no person use your brush and allow no other person’s brush used upon you.

The habit of promiscuously kissing each other that some girls at this age of puberty so often have, is a dangerous habit, because you may have placed upon your lips some of the germs which cause pimples, and then comes trouble again. Anyway, a girl is too young to be kissed and not old enough to kiss—without danger to herself.

There are many, many more little things which cause a poor complexion in the girl and grown woman. First of all is that curse of American girls and women—constipation—the result of our false and injurious prudery. I warned you we should have to refer to it again and again, for it is a condition that enters into the cause of many women’s illnesses, indispositions, tumors, open sores, headaches and other avoidable troubles.

Allowing any of the cast-off material of the stomach and intestines to remain in the lower bowel will most positively cause a muddy and pimpled skin. The reason is plain. This material is dead stuff meant to be cast off[62] out of the body EVERY day. If it remains in the body it putrefies, forms gases and acids, which are REabsorbed into your system, taken up by the blood, which later on shows it in your face. Just think of it! Would you like to go around with all the signs of putrid matter being kept in your body? Of course not; yet you will outwardly show these signs if you do not keep your lower bowels always cleaned.

What is the best way to keep the bowels clean?

Regularity in your habits of toilet is, first of all, the most important factor. Drinking plenty of water—you see I am at it again—in the morning, is next in importance. Your breakfast food can be so arranged that the bowels will empty themselves every morning if the habit and water drinking have been carefully looked after. Fruit, stewed or ripe, should be taken every morning. Little or no meat is needed nor advisable for you in the morning. Cereals—real cereals, not the sawdust and roasted bread crust stuff—are good for the morning meal. Plain, old-fashioned oatmeal comes first, then hominy or similar cereals.

The idea that buckwheat or other breakfast cakes cause pimples is all nonsense. The same is true about syrups, butter or sugar. If you have flushed your stomach and intestines with[63] water and fruit, you may eat all the cakes and sugar you wish. Candy does not affect your complexion, neither do cakes, pie, nor any sweets which ARE PURE AND EATEN AT THE PROPER TIME.

All our grandmothers’ scare and advice about eating candy and other sweets is due to the fact that they DO harm in this way. Candy and other sweets are too often eaten between meals or early in the morning and thus cause a lack of appetite. With this loss of appetite, the body cannot get its nourishing and bowel-cleansing food. It is the loss of this nourishing food and the natural result of having nothing in the intestines which will wash these food tracts out, that does all the harm. It is living unnaturally to be in such a condition, and any unnatural way of living will bring about unhealth, and this will be shown by a poor and nasty-looking complexion, a hot skin and flabby flesh.

Young women and girls often need sugar in their system and at certain times will crave it. Other girls will crave something sour—pickles, for instance. EAT PICKLES AND CANDY IF YOU CRAVE THEM. But do not forget that first you must have had a breakfast free from these substances, have thoroughly emptied your bowels and had a good noon meal. After these good meals you[64] may eat candy, pickles, ice cream, any old thing—IF THE MATERIALS ARE PURE. This is a very important matter. Eat nothing that has been exposed to the dust of the streets or any filthy place. We shall have something to say about “dope” drops and candies in which are brandies, cocaine and other drugs.

The girl who goes out at noon and buys for her luncheon éclaires, doughnuts, cream puffs and other pastry, and makes a meal of this stuff, is positively going to have a pasty complexion, be constantly constipated and unable to do her full amount of work—school, house or office. If she has taken some good soup and eaten a little nourishing food, THEN the pastry will not harm her; perhaps do her good.

I have said nothing about eggs or fish. I think most of you are glad of it and know the reason. I have had thousands of girls and young women under my charge and but few of them could eat either eggs or fish; and to many, milk was positively repulsive. At certain times these kinds of foods are nauseating to many girls and young women. Now and then a young woman will take an egg or a few bites of fish, but all through the active portion of her life she abhors a diet of such eatables. It is a case of—

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Jack Spratt could eat no pie, His wife could eat no fish; So betwixt them both Each had a separate dish.

Do not force yourself to eat anything that you do not enjoy. In good health the body will know what it needs. If it needs sugar, it will give you a craving for sugar; if you need beef, you will want it. The cravings for sweets or sours only become unnatural when they are eaten to the exclusion of nourishing food. If you have the HABIT of eating sweets in the morning, you must break this habit. You got into the habit because you gave in to a natural desire at an unnatural time.

If you are hungry before going to bed, then you will benefit by taking some nourishing and easily-digested food. Eating at night will NOT injure your complexion. It is eating indigestible food which ruins the complexion, and before bedtime you are too apt to eat those foods which lie all night in your stomach and ferment there. This is a sure and quick way to bring on a muddy complexion and a red nose.

Never drink milk with beef, pork or ham. But I do not fear this tough combination in girls or women, only it is best that you should know that such a combination will remain all[66] night in your stomach and let you know it for a few days afterwards.

I know that the majority of girls and women who are out in the selfish world, including schoolgirls, do not fully realize the great importance of proper food eaten at the proper time, that is, the bearing it has upon all their growing powers. If they did, we should not have all these patent medicines for skin, womb, stomach, headaches, and all the other doped stuff, which is ruining hundreds of thousands of those who ought to be the mothers of the future generation. I say ought to be, because unless you girls take hold at once and absorb these facts I have been telling you, and shall tell you, many, yes, most of you, will weep throughout a childless life.

What shall I apply to my face?

Nothing but water and pure soap.

Does not washing the face in water, hot or cold, bring on wrinkles?

No, never. Did you ever see wrinkles upon your canary bird? Don’t you have a bath ready for her every morning? What made the Greek and Roman maidens so beautiful in face, figure and complexion? Baths, bathing their bodies and faces daily.

But they used facial ointments, powders and creams. No, not the pure maidens or matrons; only the other kind.

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If a woman, when young, was foolish or ignorant enough to use powder or grease upon her face and kept it up, when she gets to be thirty-five or so, she has to resort to enameling her face. If now she allowed her face to be thoroughly washed by either cold or warm water, she would have wrinkles, big, deep ones. She, of course, does not believe in water on the face and will tell you so; she has her reason. And the reason is this: For years she has been maltreating her skin by stopping the natural oil from leaving the skin glands. As time went on she has applied the necessary powder—necessary to her—then had to use some form of facial cream, increasing the amount year by year. There has been no opportunity for the skin to stretch or relax, to work out its secretions, it remains almost immovable; consequently ridges and furrows form, and a good wash brings out the wrinkles and also her secret.

There is no harm in having the face massaged when you are tired, dusty and your skin feels tightly stretched. But having it gently rubbed and washed with cold water, then protected by a veil as you go out into the fresh air, is an entirely different matter from having it rubbed by one who fills in the open pores with a “facial cream” or some “beautifier.” There is only one beautifier, and that is GOOD[68] HEALTH. And once you get it you do not have to apply it every day. It will stand the rain and the sun, will defy heat and salt sprays, will be always by your side wherever you go and not put you in the awful condition of a well-known professional beauty I once knew.

This woman was traveling and became ill. I was sent for, but when I arrived I was told by the maid that Madame could not see me at that hour. Now the case was important; the woman was suffering and in danger. Never mind, she simply COULD NOT see me for several hours. She went into a delirium and was finally taken to a hospital for mental invalids.

Why wouldn’t she see me? Because her fine and notorious complexion had been left behind, and as the suffering from her pain had caused her to freely perspire, the perspiration had opened up all her wrinkles and furrows.

Unless the skin of the whole body is freely washed, the neglect will show on the complexion. A bath every morning is the secret of many bright and rosy cheeks. If you are so situated that you cannot get a tub bath every morning, winter and summer, you certainly can get a big sponge and have a sponge bath in your room. Let the water run down your spine, especially down the small of your back. Give your face a good dose of cold water. A shower on the face will keep wrinkles away[69] until late in life. Do not stop your bathing because you are unwell, only use warm or tepid water. I know that many girls are told not to even put their hands in cold water while menstruating. This is utter nonsense, if the girl is otherwise in good health. These old ideas have done much harm and kept girls from benefiting themselves by helping Nature in all her growths.

Cold baths will keep your flesh firm and hard; will take off fat if you are too fat, and put on flesh if you are too lean. Like everything in nature, the improvement comes slowly, but it certainly comes. You should commence the baths in the summer and keep them up so that when the cold weather comes the change is not very noticeable. Of course all this should be done in a warm room and you should have a warm rug to stand upon. Be sure to take a good rub with a coarse towel.

This brings us to some simple form of exercise you can do at this time which will help the bowels to empty themselves by toning the muscles of the abdomen—the stomach, you call it.

These exercises consist in bending the body from your waist several times, then swinging from side to side. You do this with your feet close together and with straightened knees. Bend forwards and downwards, touching the[70] floor with the tips of your fingers without bending the knees. Keep it up until you can do it without effort. Then swing your body from side to side, twisting and turning from the hips. Nothing will give you a more graceful figure than these forms of movements. Keep up this exercise all through your active life, and with all the other advice I have and shall give you, you can be attractive even when the gray hairs have made their appearance.

It is not the purpose of these Chats to advise you in purely medical matters, that is to tell you what to do in illness and what medicines to take. The purpose of these talks is to put you in possession of knowledge that will bring you to full womanhood, a strong, healthy woman to whom marriage and children will be a state of happiness for both husband and wife, or to a state of content, if you choose “single blessedness.” But in the matter of constipation, I think it will do no harm to tell you that, if you will take once a week a tablespoonful of SODIUM PHOSPHATE, you will be benefited. This sodium phosphate should be taken before breakfast in a full glass of water.

What about thin hair, split hairs, that dead-feeling hair?

If this condition is found in the young woman, it is ninety-nine times out of a hundred[71] her own fault, or due to her ignorance of what the scalp and hair need.

It is because she has piled a lot of dead and often diseased hair on top of her healthy and growing hair. Put a bunch of dead matter upon live and growing matter and what is the result? Death, decay!

Most of the fashions in hair and dress originate in those whose lives and age compel some artificial aid to attract attention. These foolish and freakish fashions are not for the young woman to adopt. Take the fashion of long trains, for example. The women of Paris seldom walk, they go about in automobiles or carriages. Now, sitting in these open conveyances it attracts attention to have a long folding train wrapped around the sitting figure and pulled up at the ankles to show a dainty slipper and silken hosiery. Don’t you see how ridiculous it is for a good young woman who has to walk to her daily work or school, to try to copy a fashion which is intended for an entirely different class of women? Yet, when trains were the fashion, you all did it.

You are doing about the same foolish thing now with your head. Head-gear—that is the best name for it—is intended for women whose age has depleted them of much hair or whose lives have been such that their hair has become dead through bleaching or other injurious processes—these[72] women must repair the damage. Wigs are too evident, so these women buy the hair which once graced or disgraced some other women, and pile it up in freakish forms and call it the latest fashion. The American girl and young woman immediately follow “the fashion,” and then you ask me what to do for thin hair and dead tresses!

Now, if you keep up this heathenish fashion of ruining your own beautiful hair, many of you will not only have thin hair, but become BALDHEADED. False hair, such as “puffs,” “rats,” frames, pads, “transformations,” “pin curls” and “mouse-traps,” will do the trick for you. Even the artificial means used to puff out the natural hair will ultimately injure it—injure it beyond repair.

All the false hair with the appliances to keep it in shape, press on the scalp and impede the circulation of the blood, and the part of the scalp it should supply will wither and lose all life. The result of any pressure on the blood vessels of the scalp is that the roots of the hair become impoverished, and in time the hair gets so thin and weak that it drops out.

Very little, if any, air can get to the scalp when you are “following the fashion,” which is just now in vogue. Stop this injurious and ridiculous wearing of false puffs, pads, and especially “transformations.”

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I have seen schoolgirls and typists with enough rigging of false hair and rusty wires upon their heads to give a strong man a constant headache and make him bald in a month. Your hair also falls out rapidly and constantly, but as you are blessed at the start with more luxuriant and more active growth in the scalp, it takes longer for the injury to show. But it is only a matter of time, not effect.

Then there is another matter which you do not fully realize—all good and worthy men detest this ill-smelling and dead hair you pile upon your heads. You lose all your fresh appearance, all the looks of a maiden, all the proofs of innocence. Your complexion takes on the hue of the dead hair, and when the fashion passes you can never get back the shining, luxuriant tresses men so dearly admire. Men and youths may not have told you these truths, but way down in their hearts they will pick a girl for a wife or sweetheart who has not the smell of a dead Chinaman, or whose hair has been the abiding place for an old “mouse-trap” and left the mousy odors.

The best way to insure a good head of hair is to wear it loose and free, without any artificial aids and appliances. Of course you may dress it any way it pleases you, but aside from pins it should never have any other pressure upon it.

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The hair should be washed frequently in water with a little powdered borax, but remember you wash the hair only to clean the scalp, nothing should be applied to the hair directly.

There is another fashion which has made many a girl suffer from headaches, thinned her hair and injured her complexion. This is the wearing of tight collars, neck bands, and those torturing things with points you wear stuck right up under the ears. I forget now what you call them, and I won’t tell you what I call them, for it would not sound nice to polite ears. But if you keep on wearing them a man will be able to say almost anything without you being able to hear him; for you will be deaf.

The reason these tight collars do so much injury is that they compress the arteries and veins of the neck, which at this part of the body are near the surface. They are large, full-blooded vessels and bring the blood to and return it from brain and scalp. I have known girls to faint simply from the compression due to tight collars or bands around the neck. They will almost invariably cause headaches, and every one of you know of the great relief you derive from taking them off and putting on a loose wrap or dressing sack. I have known women to suffer violent pains in the head, then dizziness and final collapse, by preventing a free circulation[75] through the brain. The same blood vessels supply the skin, and when these are stopped from nourishing the skin what do you get? A poor, pale and finally diseased skin, a starved face.