Age-old advice: Eternal youth

We mine the Free Press archives for advice that still applies today (...or doesn’t)

By: Dorothy Dix Posted: 3:00 AM CST Monday, Dec. 26, 2016

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Dorothy Dix Letter Box originally published August 22, 1931

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Dorothy Dix Letter Box originally published August 22, 1931

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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/12/2016 (3503 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Dorothy Dix Letter Box originally published August 22, 1931

Dear Dorothy Dix: Why do they put so much stress on women keeping young and beautiful while nobody seems to care about a man’s looks? Take it from me, if you look around in any company of middle-aged people the wives are Just as good-looking and slim and well dressed as the men.

-A woman.

An advertisement from the Aug. 22, 1931 newspaper. These suit prices would range between $480 and $695 in 2016 dollars.

Answer: The white woman’s burden has always been the obligation to be beautiful though ugly. No matter what her virtues, no matter what her achievements, she has always had to be a good looker or else all the balance was dust and ashes. She couldn’t offer as an alibi that, after all, It wasn’t her fault and that peaches-and-cream complexions and lissome figures and hair with a naturally curly wave to it were gifts of the gods and that she wasn’t to be blamed if she was passed over when the prize packages were handed out.

Nor could she claim that if she was short on looks she was long on performances; that if her outside adornment was scanty she offset them by her inward attractions and that she had a brilliant mind, a beautiful heart and a lovely soul. These were esteemed as highly desirable possessions, but we have felt these were not enough. She should throw in beauty too.

And that has required a bit of doing, as the English say, for most of us. Of course, if a man is handsome that is his luck and so much to the good, but his looks cut no figure in his success in life.

This having to create an illusion of beauty where none existed has been bad enough, heaven knows, but a worse misfortune still has befallen women in the last few years and that is having the curse of perpetual youth laid upon them. No woman has dared grow old or to act old. To have a birthday was worse than a scandal.

And, worst of all, women not only having to dress young but to act young. Every woman under the horrible necessity of trying to be cute, of trying to be vivacious and kittenish, of having to jump around like a monkey on a stick, of having to roll her eyes at men and be vampish. What torture, what boredom has been committed upon the elderly In the name of youth.