So far, so good.
I drank a glass of water first thing this morning. (How big is "big" in 1946 standards? I drank eight ounces.) At noon, I walked for 24 minutes. I was bummed that the route I plotted didn't end up taking a full half-hour, but I'll make it a little longer tomorrow and see if I can solve that problem. While I wait for my mattress, bed covers, and pillows to air, I thought I'd pop online and celebrate a successful first day - of many, I hope!
Many of you asked for more on the grooming routine in the 1946 issue of Good Housekeeping. Here it is in full:
GOOD-MORNING!
Out of bed and into the bathroom -
1. Drink one big glass of water.
2. Brush teeth carefully.
3. Wash face gently but thoroughly with a clean washcloth, a good mild soap, and plenty of warm water. Splash on cold to tone your skin - and open your eyes!
4. Pat on a bit of powder to take away that soap-and-water shine.
5. Put on some bright, pretty lipstick, making the edges neat and blotting away the excess.
6. Brush all the nighttime tangles from hair, and comb carefully into place, pinning securely.
7. Take a last look, to be sure you are impeccable from top to toe.
GOOD-NIGHT!
Out of your clothes and into the tub -
1. Coat yourself thoroughly with a susdy lather, and don't spare the elbow grease. Rinse well, doing face separately with water from the faucet.
2. Rub yourself dry, so that you tingle all over and chest and back turn a healthy pink.
3. Don't forget the deodorant under your arms.
4. Give your crowning glory a good swishing with the brush, dampen ends and pin up curls.
5. Brush teeth carefully.
6. Down with a nice, long glass of water - and so to bed.
ONCE A WEEK WITHOUT FAIL
1. Shampoo hair, and rinse six or seven times until it squeaks "clean." Perhaps you might need a little vinegar or lemon juice or a special rinse to bring out some "sunlit" luster.
2. Clip toenails.
3. File fingernails, push back cuticle, and apply a polish to go with your lipstick.
4. Defuzz legs and underarms.
5. Pluck scraggly eyebrows.
6. Go over clothes, and mend, clean, and brush as necessary.
The article is designed for high school-aged girls, so the routine is much more basic than a grown woman might have followed --- but it's a good place to start. I think. Some of this sounds a bit scary to me, but I'll just take it one step at a time for now.
There's nothing wrong with a glass of water first thing in the a.m., but I'm curious about the timing. Was it thought to be an aid to the digestive system? Something to perk up the appetite for breakfast? Or was it meant to benefit the skin? Roxanne mentioned in her comment on yesterday's post that our bodies are quite dehydrated when we wake up in the morning. Today in 2009 we know all kinds of benefits that water can have - from making our insides run more smoothly to flushing toxins from our bodies - but I wonder what it was in 1946 that prompted the woman writing this article to recommend drinking a glass of water first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Is it because people weren't prone to drinking very much water during the day, so she tried to squeeze a little in by making it part of a grooming ritual?
13 comments:
I was wondering about the washing hair once a week thing until I got to the part about school age girls, that means young ones right?
I try and start my day with a glass of warm eater and freshly squeezed lemon juice. Not my favourite but it's good for you! Interesting instructrions, as Amy said I wondered about the washing your hair once a week bit.
Have a lovely Esater
Isabelle x
Actually a lot of women now a days wash there hair once or even twice a day which can remove some of the helpful good oils in our hair. The recommendation for washing hair once a week is not far fetched, depending on how naturally oily your hair is. I personally only wash my hair every 3 days, washing it everyday was drying it out horribly. Every 3 days has worked very well for me. Someone with less oily hair could wash their hair every 4-5 days, more oily hair maybe every other day.
I live in the desert, so I distinctively drink water a lot. Its very easy to get dehydrated and we always tell our guests to drink a big glass of water in the morning, and anytime you have a headache here, you start with the glass of water because that's what is most likely causing it.
Amy, the article is geared toward highschoolers - so actually for the older girls. My hair gets quite oily if I go even 12 hours into day two without washing it, so that step sounds super scary to me right now --- but maybe I'll try it. I won't worry about it yet since it's a few items down on the list!
Isabelle, when I first started eating breakfast again late last year, I had no morning appetite at all. And one of the tips recommended in an vintage magazine article for people uninterested in eating that time of day was to drink a glass of water with lemon juice. It was thought to wake up the appetite.
Cebs, you're lucky to be able to wash your hair less often. I've heard, though, that a great brush and lots of brushing can be helpful in distributing the oils about so that your hair doesn't look greasy as quickly as it would otherwise.
It can take a bit for your scalp to stop producing so much oil, but if you start shampooing less often, it will even out. At my last haircut I had gone three days without a shampoo and it was still squeaky clan (I hadn't been setting it either). When I told the hairdresser, she said not washing as often really is better for your hair, and that mine was still clean showed how my body had stopped over-producing oils to compensate for what is lost on frequent washing.
Well, I see much has remained in 1955 as in the 1940's. I do only wash my hair now once a week and when you wish to set your hair and have it 'styled' it really helps to have the shine and mangeability of the natural oils in your hair. I think 8 0z is probably a big glass since a bottle of coke was 6 0z (not even a full cup!)
The once a week hair washing thing is because women would often go to the salon once a week to get their hair set. Through all the perms and heat drying of pin curls, their hair was quite damaged and dry. There is also the matter of hats, which hid any oiliness a women may start developing at her roots.
Well, I only wash my hair once a week and DO NOT go to the salon. I find that with good brushing in the evening and morning that mair hair does not appear greasy, at least not to me, and I really like the way it feels and behaves better. I really think the frequent washing was merely marketing, think about it, who buys more hair product the woman who washes her hair four times a month or the one who washes it 30 times?
Teru, that over-compensating thing makes a lot of sense. It's the transition part that worries me. :)
50sgal, yes, that shiny look was THE hair look you see throughout this era. (Maybe I shouldn't be speaking in the past tense to you!) And to think that we today buy products to add shine back in to our hair after washing it on a daily basis...
Congratulations on starting the drinking water and walking routine!
I'm not being condescending here. I'm just passing on what life was like until quite recently for most of America. And remember, most of America was "rural"!
Hair washing was a Friday night, Saturday morning, or Saturday afternoon ritual - depending on what was planned for the weekend. Hair was washed and set in curlers, pin curls, or rags and covered with a scarf. Then we went about doing our chores. It was the norm for almost all girls and women to be seen on Saturday with their hair in curlers. Everyone was clean for church Sunday morning. Curls were touched up during the week.
(For me the hair setting lasted until about 1969 when long straight hair was in style, but for the older women this went on until ??? I washed my hair more than most girls, too, because I swam almost everyday.)
In the 1940's and into the 50's in many homes water still had to be hauled in or pumped by hand. Then it had to be heated on the wood cookstove (or in it if the stove had a water reservoir). If the house did have a real bathroom, there was probably only one. If they were "lucky" to have the bathroom upstairs with the bedrooms, there was seldom enough water pressure to flush the toilet much less fill a tub or wash hair! Hot water had to be hauled upstairs. So hair was washed in the kitchen sink or over a basin. It was always easier to have someone else wash your hair and rinse it for you.
My siblings and I were spoiled. By the time I was 5, we had moved to town. My parents bought a house with two! bathrooms. (One was Grandma's, but we could use it in an emergency). The next house had *gasp* a built-in dishwasher, 3 bathrooms - one with a real walk-in shower. (Everyone that came to our house had to see the shower! Please note that we weren't rich. We did without many things in order to live in a nice home.) Most everyone in our neighborhood had only one bathroom - no matter how many children there were.
Even in the 1980's, I knew lots of people who still had only an outhouse, had no wired-in electricity, and used the old hand crank telephones that were connected to each others' houses by miles of wire. (Most, but not all, of the houses did have running water in the kitchen which was gravity fed from a cistern. The cistern - that is another story!) So, even though I personally lived well, I was no stranger to having to "rough it".
How old am I? Not quite 55.
Oh, my oldest grandmother seldom washed her hair. She used witch hazel and ? on it. Her hair was really long, pure white, and was absolutely beautiful.
Because my skin gets irritated very easily, I only wash my hair and shower twice a week now. (I do sponge bathe and use deodarant, so you don't have to hold your nose. LOL.)
Slowly, slowly wean your hair from so many washings. Try using less shampoo and for every other washing very little to no shampoo, then no washing/rinsing - letting your skin/scalp stablize between each change. Try a gentler shampoo and rinsing with vinegar or lemon water instead of using a conditioner.
Oh, and I don't know about any of you, but if I drink water before I go to bed I have to get up two or three times in the night! I think that is counter productive. :)
Sorry I wrote a book. Again.
I find it somewhat commical that women were only expected to "defuzz" once a week! LOL. I know this was meant as a guide for high school girls, but it seems as though a woman would always want to be as "fuzz" free as possible. By the way, the word defuzz absolutely kicks the pants of off shaving!
Packrat-it's funny to hear that story as, today is saturday and guess what, that's right, I showered, washed my hair, set it and am doing my chores today with my 'hairsetting scarf'. So, Saturday evening (our vintage dinner night) my hair is always the best and then it gets touch ups through the week. I have also started using bar soap on my hair. One day I was just looking at my shampoo and the bar soap and the shower gel and the shave gel etc and thought, "Huh?" So, I tried the soap and my hair was 'squeeky clean' like they mention in my magazines. I later found out that indeed, though I see advertisments for Cream shampoo and some prell liquid shampoo ads, many women used bar soap, and why not? Clean is clean and I don't have to overcondition and add all the things to my hair, because now it is not stripped and my shiny hair combs from brushing it every day morning and night and it certainly saves on the budget. It seems normal to me now, but certianly must sound odd or foul to others.
"Through all the perms and heat drying of pin curls, their hair was quite damaged and dry."
16_sparrows, I believe it! And when you combine daily hair washing with daily blow drying these days --- no wonder my hair gets oily so quickly!
Packrat, thanks for sharing such a wonderful description of hairwashing in rural America. Lots of older ladies still get their hair set once a week. I wonder what you baby boomers will do to shake things up as you approach your golden years. You do have a way of shaking things up! :)
I vividly recall the house in Maine where I lived from age 5 to 13. We didn't have a shower, just an old claw foot tub. So if you didn't happen to be taking a bath that night (we probably bathed every other night and had a sponge bath in between) and your hair needed washing, you had to do it in the bathroom sink. I must have gotten much more sensitive about daily hair washing as I approached teenagehood. I would stand over the sink and cover my face with a dry washcloth as my mom poured cupfuls of water over my hair to wet it, lathered it up while I tried to keep the soap out of my eyes, and rinsed it off afterward. She'd squeeze it dry over the sink then wrap my head in a towel turban.
Gosh, I haven't thought of that in forever! This wasn't all that long ago - early to mid-80s. 50s gal, I recall that in a pinch, Ivory soap would do quite nicely. Just took a little longer to work up a good lather.
Emer, I was scratching my head over the once-weekly shave, too. But I guess when it wasn't proper to go out without hose and our clothing up top was much more modest than today, women didn't have to worry about people seeing their stubbly legs or underarms very often! The one that really puzzles me is the deodorant last thing in the evening before bed. Ack! Nobody cares if I sweat at night!!!
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