Charm of Person

The system which works with best results for women who pride themselves on daintiness and charm of person is bath first, and the use of their favorite deodorant afterwards, and the deodorant used again in a few hours.

Believe it or not, it's been about 21 hours now since I applied my deodorant --- and I'm still odor- and perspiration-free! No small feat in the Southwest in August. I even left my air-conditioned office for a walk at noon. I wouldn't say I'm feeling fresh as a daisy, but I still felt quite fresh when I left the house this morning. Now I'm just neutral. Maybe there's something to this nightly application of deodorant after all.

Commercially prepared deodorants were nothing new in the 1940s - Mum was patented in 1888 - but what hadn't been invented yet was the deodorant stick. (Ban Roll-On was the first in 1952.) Whether you bought deodorant in a cream, paste, liquid, or powder form, it always had to be applied by hand.

I suspect that use of deodorant wasn't yet as universal as it is today. Women from rural areas, for instance, or from families hard hit by the Depression --- they were probably more likely to think that soap and water should be more than enough to keep oneself clean and fresh. Vintage ads for the stuff are absolutely savage and must have gone a long way toward the addition of a deodorant to many a medicine cabinet. If you didn't use deodorant, you were surely destined for spinsterdom and friendlessness:

You chased him behind that paper, Cookie.

Some things you just can't mask, Pigeon!

Hips aren't your big problem, Honey!

Even Venus couldn't get away with that.

And there must have plenty of women trying to cover body odor with perfume, because the ads sound all kinds of alarms against that practice:

Don't be that kind of a Cover Girl!

"Be a safety-first girl..."

My little apartment has been in a state of upheaval for the last few days. I had some minor plumbing issues with the bathtub/shower, but it was enough to throw off that part of my routine entirely. After cleaning the bathroom on Saturday, I didn't want the tub to get all scurvy again before I had maintenance up to scope out my problem --- so I've been taking showers only since Saturday morning. Well, the maintenance guy was here yesterday and replaced my shower head and all the metal fixtures in my bathtub. You should have seen the water pressure I got this morning! Practically blew me out of the bathroom. I'm excited to get back in the bathtub this evening, though.

You know what I did learn during the last few days in Showerland? If I roll my hair up when it's freshly washed in the morning, it doesn't hold the curl nearly as well as when I wash my hair the night before and just wet it in the morning. I also found out that I'm way more excited now by the clean-ability of my bathtub fixtures than I am by their look. Once upon a time, I might have been concerned only with the fact that they were cute. The first thing I did when I got home yesterday was to check out those fixtures to see if they'd be easy to keep clean. And I think they will. Score 1 for the housekeeper!

My lunches for the last few days have been almost identical to Monday's. (I'm a one-woman household and that soup has got to be eaten up!) I'm definitely not feeling any afternoon hunger - which is a happy surprise considering that the vintage lunch has 2/3 the calories. One more day of the creamy broccoli/egg-salad combo and I should be ready for a new vintage lunch menu on Friday. This next one sounds a little, well, strange. Will I be able to choke it down? Will I actually enjoy it? Stay tuned...

I'm going to try the night-time deodorant thing tonight. The first time I read through the 1946 grooming routine, I thought it was nuts to apply your deodorant immediately after taking your nightly bath. Wouldn't you want to be as fresh as possible in the morning? Wouldn't you sweat it all away during the night??? So I was chatting with a friend the other day and she told me that she'd recently started using one of those new "clinical strength" deodorant/antiperspirants. Strangely enough, the directions on the container tell her to apply it at night! Maybe those vintage beauty experts were onto something after all. Well, we've sure got the right conditions to give this technique a run for its money. Temps should reach 104 or 105 degrees F. again tomorrow.

By the by, 169 seems to be my watermark when it comes to matchmaking. Since Monday, no less than two people have suggested setting me up with somebody! An acquaintance wants to set me up with a 44-year-old engineer who's a friend of the family. She describes him as "a little nerdy," but very athletic (hiking and swimming). She's one of the kindest people I know, so I'm intrigued. One of my closest co-workers also wants to set me up with a friend. Which would probably be a bad idea seeing as she's also kind of a supervisor of mine. I think I'll try to pass on that one!

Week Forty: The Mission

Fitness
As I continue getting used to the extra resistance those 1-lb. wrist weights add to my arms, I'm going to add a few more limbering and stretching exercises to my evening routine. These exercises targeting "heavy hips" and a "thick waistline" were featured in the March 27, 1947 edition of Salt Lake City's Deseret News:

13. Get on your knees, keeping your back straight and arms stretched overhead. Bend your body sharply to the right side, and lower the hips as far as possible toward the floor. Then raise your body up straight, bend to the left side, and lower hips. Repeat 4 times; rest. 8 to 12 times altogether.

14. Stand with arms out to the sides, and kick your right leg across your body, trying to touch the left hand. Feel that stretch? Return leg to position, and kick the left leg. Do 12 times, alternating legs.

15. Now get down on the floor, flat on your back, with legs straight and arms out to the sides. Keep shoulders flat on the floor. Pull both knees up to your chest and roll them over to left side, then to right. Swing from side to side 6 times; rest. 12 to 18 times altogether.

Reducing
My weekday lunches have gone almost untouched thus far by the changes I've made to my diet. The only thing I've been doing differently at lunchtime is to opt for fruit when it comes to dessert. I guess I've been holding out on this meal because it's the high point of a working day which can sometimes seem like a long slog! Unfortunately, my lunch choices are often quite high in sodium - and probably in calories - and filled with additives and preservatives... So I've been collecting vintage menus for the lunchbox and am planning on trying some of these out. I'll have to make some adaptations, of course. Cut down on the carbs and eliminate the desserts. Stick to vintage portion sizes. Make open-faced sandwiches. And I'll keep an eye on the calorie content of these meals to make sure I'm not exceeding what I've been accustomed to eating for lunch on weekdays. Here's the original menu that I'll be adapting for tomorrow's lunch. It's included in a chapter on "The Lunch Box" in The American Woman's Cook Book (1945):

Cream of Spinach Soup
Crackers
Egg Salad Sandwiches with Lettuce
Raw Vegetable Strips
Apple
Cup Cake

Grooming
And here's the next step in the 1946 grooming routine. After taking my evening bath (or morning shower on the weekends) and a brisk dry with the towel:

Don't forget the deodorant under your arms.

Deodorant at night? Won't I be all sweaty by the time I head to work in the morning???