The Secret of Make-up
MY DISTASTE for dyed hair, however, is only aesthetic. Since my marriage I have completely changed my point of view about dressing up for effect. Before I married I hardly ever used make-up, except when playing. I didn’t care what I looked like. I was the worst-dressed actress in New York by the unanimous consent of my friends. I refused to make up offstage because I didn’t feel like myself with paint and powder on. My eyebrows and lashes, like my hair, are almost white. They were my alibi that the shade of my hair really was natural, but they also made me look permanently tired and washed out. I never bothered about it though. But now I want to look as attractive as possible—as a compliment to my husband, perhaps. I even use make-up on the street—very little, I hope, because I don’t want to look made up, for the purpose of make-up is to simulate perfect health. To look made up is to impress people with paint and powder rather than with your own personality.
I find that the secret of make-up is to put it on and then rub it all off. Enough will stay on to accentuate your features.
When I make up for the street I barely indicate that I have eyebrows and eyelashes by outlining them with a brown eyebrow pencil. This delicate bit of shadowing gives my eyes a little more depth, but even if one’s eyes are set deep they should be shadowed. The shading brings out all their quality and luster and form. Blond women should not use a dark eyebrow pencil. It makes light hair look bleached by contrast.
In rouging my cheeks I blend the coloring into my whole face, as I do in the theater. I work the color—just a tiny dab of it—almost as far back as my ears, and way up into my temples, and down as far as possible on the cheek, so that the result is a diffused rosy glow so delicate as to be almost no color at all. Only a little make-up should be used. Making up is a delicate, illusive art. As with perfume, you should aim to make people wonder whether you use make-up or not. And if you do, what on earth is it, and where is it? Otherwise you might just as well paint yourself as boldly as an Indian and lose the entire quality of illusion.
by actress Ann Harding – The Ladies Home Journal, March 1927