Sex and the Single Girl: The Unmarried Woman's Guide to Men (27 page)

Hair

It’s every girl’s mortal enemy, I guess. Yet it can be so two-faced and friendly on certain occasions!

These are the few pippy-poo things I have learned about coping with hair.

You know the old wives’ tale that washing hair often isn’t good for it? I’m the old wife who is still perpetuating it! Shampooing oily hair every forty-eight hours just makes it oilier at the scalp, while it may stay quite dry on the ends and break off. Soap-and-watering makes dry hair drier.

Once a week, Marguerite (dry scalp), Veronica (no problems), and I (oily scalp) have a nice woman come to the office and comb, brush and massage our heads forty minutes apiece at lunchtime. She uses seven brushes, seven combs and a lot of energy on each of us. This distributes the oil properly and gives the scalp a real workout.

Could you find someone to do this for you on a regular basis? Mrs. Chase charges two-fifty at our office, a dollar fifty in her home.

Loretta Young, who has beautiful long flowing tresses, uses a similar method and rarely shampoos.

Marguerite, Veronica and I brush our hair every night and shampoo about every two weeks. Then a shampoo really
means
something … hair gets squeaky clean and shiny bright. I use a dry shampoo between regular ones. Cornmeal is fine. Just toss it in and brush it out. This coats fine hair ever so lightly and seems to make more of it.

Hair sprays, though marvelous, should be eschewed if you shampoo seldom.

Chopping off the tiniest row of hair all around blunts the ends and makes it seem thicker. Every two or three weeks you should have grown enough to do it.

If you would look sexy, wear more hair. Not shoulder-length necessarily, but not that Joan of Arc little-pointy-snips business either. She was a
soldier
!

If your features are not classically beautiful, go glamorous with hair. It can get you the compliments Grecian profiles get other girls. Grow it long and pile it high. If it won’t grow, or isn’t especially good hair, buy a switch to use as a braid or chignon. Inexpensive nylon ones are quite lifelike. Real hair ones are terrific.

I remember sitting behind actress Agnes Moorehead at the Biltmore Theatre one night. She had miles and miles of carrot-red hair piled high on her head. Miss Moorehead
is
beautiful but not a youngster. ’Neath the hair she wore a pale pink satin floor-length evening coat and gown. Just wow!

I can’t imagine going to the beauty shop for a conservative hair style. You can do that yourself. My Alice knows she’s free to wire me for sound and to add laurel leaves if the mood strikes her.

I don’t think anybody is even asking any more, “Does she or doesn’t she?” They just want to know where can
they
get that color? Even the dyes are simple to do at home.

Excess Hair on Legs and Arms (Brunette Department)

If you have so much of it that hot-wax treatments would take four Sundays, then bleach. Use two-thirds bleaching peroxide, one-third household ammonia and some soap flakes. Stir. Slather this on thick over arms and thighs, sit in the sun to dry if you can; otherwise just do housework. Repeat several times. The whole treatment may take an hour, but you can do other things during it. The hair will become platinum blond and far less obtrusive. Shave the hair on lower legs and under arms, of course.

The Big Change

Here are four expensive and think-twice-about-it investments that can conceivably push you over the edge into real beauty—or return you to it.

Are you
sure
you can’t wear them? Check with someone who has successfully overcome the tedious running-in period. You may be inspired. (It
would
be nice to gaze into your soul not under glass.) A
Harper’s Bazaar
writer tells of using hypnotism to curb her involuntary prejudice against contacts.

A young friend of mine has been appearing in one for several weeks now, and she looks prettier and “more natural” than I’ve ever seen her. The wig is lighter than her hair, and she’s lightened her make-up to match.

I ordered one this week in champagne blond (I’m mouse brunette), and I can’t
wait
!

A good wig of real hair costs $75 plus postage. (They’ve come way down in price this last year.) The wigs are in ten colors, all head sizes, and are beautifully coifed. You can match your own hair or go more glamorous. If you’d like more information or would like to order, this is where: Gilbert’s House of Charm, 1105 Glendon Avenue, West Los Angeles, California. Send a photo and snip of your hair if you want it matched.

Plastic surgery is admittedly expensive, not covered by Blue Cross, horribly uncomfortable for a few days—but oh my foes and oh my friends—the results! The lovely cataclysmic results are the kind you can’t get any other way.

Your nearest and dearest ones may discourage you from alterations. They love you as you are, bless them. But the change is for
you.

I had my nose revised last spring and couldn’t be more delighted. It’s very much like my old one but smaller. Close friends I haven’t seen for a while don’t even realize anything’s new. They just tell me I look pretty, or rested, or something. Yes, plastic surgery is very, very “natural!”

Other kinds—breasts made smaller, chins increased or decreased, heavy eyelids tautened, faces lifted—these I am not at all familiar with. People I’ve heard of who “bought them” seem to be smiles and praises for the results. However, I assume you’ll consult with a first-rate doctor if you’re interested in plastic work of
any
kind. I’m just a cheerleader.

This small electrotherapy machine exercises facial muscles (which you can’t begin to get at yourself) so that they hold up your skin again; it also increases circulation and erases small lines. The treatment is relaxing. Afterwards, you use a mask if you want to, and your face does indeed come out sort of “newborn.” The procedure is troublesome. And you must do it often. But an aging skin (which everybody’s is, isn’t it?) is a potent beauty problem and not readily susceptible to milder attack.

The best electronic “face” machine I found (which I bought) is made by Venner Kelsen, 121 North Almont Drive, Beverly Hills, California. The not inconsiderable cost, at the time I bought it, was a good two hundred and fifty bucks.

Venner also makes a variety of high-powered treatment items: black mud-pie mask, a stinging shocking-pink circulation cream, hormone oil that almost seems to undo damage right before your eyes and some good salves for acne. Write her if you’re interested in any of this sorcery.

I must reiterate that all my personal recommendations are only that. They work for me. And I
pay
for the products, so please don’t think I get any kind of rake-off on these recommendations. I’m just trying to tell you what I would tell a friend. And it would be pretty silly (wouldn’t it?) for a friend to beat around the bush when it comes to prices, trade names, and where to get things.

Now I think you should rest your face and all of the other basic equipment involved in self-improvement for a while. The time has come at last to talk about men again—and how to get involved with them without really trying.

T
HE
READERS DIGEST
ONCE
published an article about an unmarried woman who had Given In, suffered unspeakable guilt and humiliation, decided she could no longer face the degradation of the relationship and had moved to another city to Start Over. The
Digest
left little doubt that she’d done the only thing a single woman under such circumstances
could
do.

Most magazines, other than
Playboy,
seem to go along with the
Reader’s Digest.

A recent issue of the
Ladies Home Journal
summed up its stand in the last paragraph of an article entitled “Is the Double Standard out of Date?” by stating that a single woman confronted by a man who “insists” can do one of two things. “She can marry him, or she can say ‘No.’ ”

I don’t know about girls in Pleasantville and Philadelphia where these magazines are published, but I do know that in Los Angeles, where I live, there is something else a girl can say and frequently does when a man “insists.” And that is “yes.” As for moving to another city to Start Over, if all the unmarried girls having affairs in my city alone felt called upon to do
that
, there would be the biggest population scramble since Exodus.

Nice, single girls
do
have affairs, and they do not necessarily die of them! They suffer sometimes, occasionally a great deal. However, quite a few “nice” single girls have affairs and do not suffer at all!

As for the girls who do as the
Readers Digest
and
Ladies Home Journal
would have them do—or not do—one young woman who remained chaste for many years stated it this way:

“I have yet to encounter a happy virgin. Quite the contrary, I feel she eventually finds social, religious and maternal approval quite inadequate compensation for not ever really belonging to anyone, and her state of purity becomes almost an embarrassing cross to bear. She harbors a feeling that life is passing her by; and, as she grows older, her position with men and with herself becomes increasingly defensive. In other words, it is my belief, she is no longer a virgin by freedom of choice but is instead hopelessly trapped by her own inhibitions, drastically reducing her chance for happiness and/or marriage. An affair represents a whole
new
set of problems, of course, but to my way of thinking they’re
healthier.
The point is, either way you suffer, but I think remaining chaste is worse because you have
no
pleasure to offset the pain. Having an affair can be agony, but it can also be ecstasy and
is
… more often than we masochists are willing to admit!”

In defense of the mature affair, it must surely be stated that it is the sexiest of all alliances. Teen-age experimentation is shallow and lacking in plot. Married love can be sunny and sweet and satisfying, but an affair between a single woman and her lover can be unadulterated, cliff-hanging sex.

An affair between a
married
woman and her lover may be that way too, but the danger of being found out and the guilt if you aren’t would spoil most of the fun, I should think.

Why Does She Do It?

A single woman has an affair for these reasons:

1.
The Urge.
Her body wants to. For weird and wonderful reasons that she will never really understand, some lucky special man “has it” for her.

2.
Super Warmth.
She adores and respects a man and wants to have the closest relationship with him possible, even though her body may not hunger for him.

A psychiatrist friend of mine says that a girl who has a physical relationship with a man for any but these two reasons is prostituting herself. I’m afraid some mighty nice girls fall into his shady-lady category because they also participate for the following reasons:

3.
The Urge To Merge.
A woman hopes to sink into a man so completely he will never be able to unsink her. He’ll have to marry her!

4.
Fringe Glamour.
She is going with a man over her head—glamorous, rich or famous. She enjoys the glitter life; and, though she is not kept, she knows she could not possibly be the constant companion of such a prize if she didn’t sleep with him.

5.
Security.
A certain kind of woman only feels “safe” when she extracts the supreme compliment a man can pay. Though she may not actually enjoy the act of sex, she insists on it with almost every man she dates and is uneasy when it is not on the schedule. This isn’t the clinical description but I would call her a nymphomaniac.

6.
Approval.
She isn’t sure of her beauty, brains or background but knows her love-making is first-rate. She uses this talent to please and be popular.

Who With?

Crass and callous though it may make her seem, a desirable woman is usually more favorably disposed toward a man who is solvent and successful than someone without status. She prefers a tycoon to a truck driver no matter how sexy the latter looks peering down at her from the cab of his chrome chariot.

She doesn’t rule out young or not so young struggle, but if possible she wants somebody she can introduce to her friends with enthusiasm, not show off with shudders.

Most single women find no dearth of men to go to bed with.

A New York manufacturer of cosmetics is supposed to have brought down the house at a luncheon by saying that when a woman puts on her make-up she is thinking just one thing: “Tonight, boy, I’m going to get laid!”

Did you ever hear anything so silly? Getting Dial spelled backward is
not
her problem. Finding someone with whom it might be worth while
is.

When?

A girl may “surrender” any time between two hours after she’s met a “possible” to two years of going steady. There is no countdown prescribed by single-girl etiquette, though my guess would be that most affairs that are going to happen start after a few dates.

A girl can usually sense even on a first date whether or not a man is somebody she could become involved with.
No
matter how much she attributes “giving in” to persuasion on his part, something will have “clicked on” in her brain the day or night of the denouement that permits the affair to begin. In my opinion, no girl is technically seduced.

I agree with Dr. Kinsey that months or even years may elapse between affairs for most single women, not because of prudery but because of lack of a suitable him.

How Long Does It Last?

An affair can last from one night to forever. I know one rare couple, not married to each other, who are still happily at it after twenty years.

Trouble, My Friends

Certain types of women handle affairs well. Some are divorcees who want nothing more in this world than not to be married again. Some are women over forty who have stopped fussing and fretting about who owes what to whom and accept male companionship on terms most generous to a man.