Sex and the Single Girl: The Unmarried Woman's Guide to Men (15 page)

The other legitimate sale purchase is when there’s a big gap in your wardrobe. You’ve been wearing your raincoat for an evening wrap. What you really need is a black silk Balenciaga greatcoat for about $285—fat chance of having
that
in your piggy bank. Case every sale in the exclusive shops or expensive floors of department stores that carry this kind of merchandise. When you find
your
coat, but only
your
coat, reduced to $135, pounce!

If you only need a sweater or a purse—I suppose it’s okay to prowl the sales. But so much sale merchandise doesn’t quite have it. Or rather it has too much—one bow, one braid too many. For another five dollars you could have what you’d be really thrilled with.

The costlier the merchandise, the better the sale. No junk is hauled in for the occasion. The mark-up was greater to begin with, so they can afford to take more off. The styles are apt to be classic, so you can wear them longer. The fabric and workmanship are superb. You may enjoy these even in a boo boo!

As for picking up odd little dresses for $13, that is a luxury y
ou
can’t afford, at least in my opinion. You need to look glamorous every minute.

Buy wholesale (if you’re lucky enough to have a contact) but only things you’ve picked out at retail and somebody has arranged to order for you. I know a girl (me) who used to gobble up dresses in showrooms as though they didn’t cost
money.
They didn’t fit, were the wrong color, and I wouldn’t have looked at them twice in a store.

Don’t tie up your funds in cases of facial tissue and soap. Quantity buying of that sort
is
for large families.

Hand lotion and shampoos are pretty much alike. Buy big cheap bottles.

Watch for the invisible “pickpockets” in hardware and drug stores. Those innocent twenty-nine-cent items can murder twenty dollars.

Buy certain-to-be-needed Christmas gifts through the year at sales.

Make your own presents. Pink-and-white checked cotton cocktail aprons with yards of pink grosgrain ribbon for a waistband and streamer sash are lovely. Total investment: one dollar and one hour each. Four red-and-white checked linen place mats with fringed napkins are charming. Just cut them straight and fringe!

Cook presents! A young Canadian friend has people drooling by autumn for her annual Christmas shortbread.

Gift the people who don’t expect a return present (the rich, the men, executives repaying a business favor) with some tiny item—a pillbox, a bottle opener—wrapped like a precious jewel.
McCall’s
Christmas issue usually shows how to cover eggshells in velvet and rickrack—that sort of thing.

Make your own Christmas cards. Rough cerulean blue art paper from the art supply store cut in squares, messaged in green India ink, sprayed with stickum, dusted with gold sparkles, then folded into a plain envelope, makes a lovely card. Mimeograph your own Christmas poem on a three-penny postcard.

Go in with other girls on shower gifts—four, six, eight of you. A bride is in no position to whine.

Don’t give expensive presents to men. Madness!

Are you really going to keep the fifteen-dollar bath salts when you need a purse? Exchange anything that isn’t
you
unless it came from a dear friend.

Expect and encourage gifts from men. They are part of the spoils of being single.

We’ll discuss wardrobe planning in another chapter. These are a few random thoughts on economy.

Never buy anything in a hurry. Your insecurity is showing! Impulse purchases you
may
make for a sudden date are a new wide, black velvet hairbow, fresh white gloves, one shampoo and set. If you do succumb to a dress—and who doesn’t?—try to make it one you’ll cherish when the big anxiety has ebbed.

Don’t try to have too many clothes. Buy important things. A girl can have enough blouses and skirts to outfit the WAC and never have anything to wear.

Welcome hand-me-downs. If the fabrics are good, cut them into something new and chic.

The larger your collection of junk jewelry, probably the worse dressed you are! Take the pledge. Your saving the first three months should net you an important piece of costume jewelry.

Brush your woolens, sponge the spots, air them. Don’t snuff out their life at the cleaners.

Wash your own sweaters—in Woolite. Press them with a barely warm iron.

Wear old clothes or
no
clothes at home alone.

Get a tan and go without stockings.

Do your own hair. I can’t imagine why any girl under thirty-five except an entertainer would need weekly professional hairdressing.

Keep your nails virginally clean and omit polish.

“Forget” some of your lingerie. Anything you’re not wearing out thread by thread is money in your piggy bank. An actress in her fifties now living in Europe wears only pants … no bra, no slip, no girdle. She has one of the world’s great figures. Another actress, according to interviews,
doesn’t
wear pants—so far she has landed the lushest parts, the handsomest husbands and hasn’t had pneumonia. Why not
try
not wearing pants if you wear a slip. If you’re small but firm-busted, you don’t need a bra. (Carol uses Band-Aids across her nipples under fabrics too sheer to wear bra-less.) I personally am anti-girdle, not only because they’re costly, but they drive me
nuts.
Leave them off too if you have a trim backside.

Wear everything you buy. No hoarding.

Suppose with all this austerity you have not only managed to afford mink on a mouse budget, you have managed to save a little money. How do you make that money
make
money?

While it is accumulating, keep it in a savings and loan company rather than a regular bank, where interest rates are lower. Loan company accounts are insured to $10,000 just as regular bank accounts are.

Buying insurance that will pay you later is safe but extravagant saving. If you banked the same money that your premiums cost in a loan company and let the interest compound itself, you’d have far more capital at the end of fifteen years than the insurance will bring.

After you have put aside a small cash fund for emergencies, your straightest road to dollar-doubling is stock. It not only collects interest (dividends), your capital also grows as the company prospers. Please note:

A small portfolio of stocks is very sexy.

Any brokerage firm will be delighted to advise you no matter how small your investment. And it’s fun to have a broker! Mine’s a woman. Far from being high-pressure folks, they will probably keep you from plunging suicidally into speculative stock. No matter how attractive the tip, if the stock can go up four points in one day, it can go down! The only people to take hot market tips from are your boss or a wealthy beau. If the stock goes down, these two may be so ashamed of themselves they will personally make up your losses.

If you’d like to try your
own
hand at selecting stocks, here are twelve rules that have made a fortune in the market for advertising tycoon Don Belding since his retirement from Foote, Cone & Belding four years ago. Mr. Belding admits that few stocks meet this rigid check list, and when you find some that only miss on a point or two, you can use your own judgment. All the information needed to evaluate the stocks is in Standard & Poor’s
Stock Guide
, available at any brokerage firm. Mr. Belding says the best stocks of all are chewing tobacco! Here are his rules: Buy stocks in companies that:

1. Pay a 6 per cent dividend or more.
   
2. Have a long record of dividend payments.
   
3. Have a twenty-year low (market quotation) not less than 25 per cent of twenty-year high.
   
4. Have current assets to current liabilities at least four to one.
   
5. Have cash and equivalent more than current liabilities.
   
6. Have no burdensome long-term debt.
   
7. Have very little if any preferred stock.
   
8. Have modest capitalization of common stock.
   
9. Have a five-year record of advancing sales or evidence of progress.
   
10. Have a last report of earnings up.
    
11. Are impervious to bombing (away from congested centers or have several plants).
    
12. Are listed on American or New York or local stock exchange.
    

Now on to some other places to put your money sexily.

I
F YOU ARE TO BE
a glamorous, sophisticated woman that exciting things happen to, you need an apartment and you need to live in it alone! After your thirtieth birthday, a great Dane would do more for your image than two roommates, and dogs don’t borrow sweaters!

Being Mama’s or Daddy’s girl and living at home is rarely justifiable either.

Parents who are ill and need you are one thing. A solution takes faith, patience and saving money until you can afford to hire semiprofessional care that will free you. If you are locked in an emotional death grip, that is something else and may require psychiatry.

If you are a widow or divorcee with children, living with an older family member may be a blessing. For others, the financial savings and fringe benefits of having roommates or living at home can’t possibly compensate for the sacrifice of freedom and prestige.

A beautiful apartment is a sure man-magnet, and not only because he expects to corner you in it and gobble you up like Little Red Riding Hood. A wolf can wolf any place! Besides, you’re a big girl now. If a wolf is running around loose in your apartment, you probably want him there.

A man is pleased and soothed by a beautiful apartment (I’m ruling out houses as too expensive) just as he is by beautiful clothes (and don’t think he isn’t), a beautiful face or beautiful music. Few men really
prefer
the honest simplicity of log-cabin trappings. A man would rather put his feet up on a genuine Moroccan leather hassock. (Not that he’s going to find a big masculine thing like that in
your
apartment!)

A man also makes a mental note of your ability to afford a posh pad and your cleverness at fixing it up.

A chic apartment can tell the world that you, for one, are not one of those miserable, pitiful single creatures. When your name comes up in the conversation, people will say with far more glowing admiration, “That girl has the most divine apartment!” than they will ever say, “That girl has the most divine husband!” One is something
she
created. You must value yourself in order to be successfully single, however, and you must sincerely believe you
deserve
beautiful surroundings, otherwise you’re apt to put up with something dreary.

Think of yourself as a star sapphire. Your apartment is your setting.

To Furnish or Not To Furnish

Furnish by all means. Find a blank space in which you can create black, blue, green and pink magic! All but the most costly furnished apartments are stuffed at best with cheap modern stuff. At worst, which is most of the time, they are filled with sleazy junk.

If you haven’t already discovered it, acquiring your own household possessions is a joy. It’s creative. You’ll see.

What Part of Town Should You Be In?

Don’t live too far from your work. Driving or bus riding twenty miles each way to a job eats up precious time, money and energy. Wouldn’t you rather be home making a chocolate soufflé or reading a novel?

If you are being courted by a man, try to live near
him.

Roosting on a beautiful tree-lined street in a fashionable neighborhood would be lovely, but who can afford it? Don’t pine. Some of the most amusing, chic and elegant apartments in any city, particularly New York, gleam like pearls in crazy old neighborhoods. I lived for eight years in downtown Los Angeles, possibly one of the most un-chic areas this side of the Ganges.

How Much To Pay

Not too much! If you try to show off in a building or neighborhood you can’t afford, you must dress, drive, entertain and
live
poshly; and that way lies debtor’s prison! A more impressive way to impress is with what’s inside—you and the furniture! Dazzled by you both, nobody will remember they came through a slum to get to you.

In Japan many homes are drab, unprepossessing shacks on the outside. Rare beauty dwells within.

I learned how unimportant exteriors were by watching the transformation of an apartment in a rabbit-hutchy old building in Beverly Hills. Two friends paid $62.50 a month for a 20 x 50 cubicle and turned it into a corner of Versailles! Getting asked to dinner there was an occasion to wear your chinchilla.

Search a long time for a cheap, satisfactory apartment. Moving is trouble, expensive, and nothing ever fits in the new place. Leave your name and phone number with the owners of buildings you like and keep checking back for vacancies.

What To Look For in a Building

Views, fireplaces, patios are nice, but they jack the rent. You can live without them.

I personally like old buildings better than spanky new ones because they are better built, better soundproofed, have higher ceilings and more charm. They fix up more elegantly. But who am I to deprive you of garbage disposals and large sweeps of plate-glass windows? You’ll have to decide.

Stove, refrigerator and carpeting are now provided in many unfurnished apartments. These also up the rent. If they don’t come
with
, you can easily get the kitchen fixings secondhand, and carpets are no great problem.

Don’t try for too many rooms or even too
big
rooms. It takes too much money to black-magic them. My friend Agnes lives over a garage in one enormous room with a tiny crumbling bath. A hot plate and icebox behind a screen make the kitchen, but you can see wonderful old sycamores through the windows. Agnes has gone chintz, ruffles and pewter, and the place has tremendous charm.

Check the soundproofing. Most modern buildings have paper-thin walls. Your conversations may be fascinating, but you can be bored to distraction by the neighbors’!

If traffic noise bothers you, don’t forget to “listen” as you “interview” apartments. If the place is a fabulous buy
except
for street noises, you can learn to adjust, however. After five sleepless nights, nothing can keep you awake on the sixth, and then you’re adjusted!