Book Review -- Better Than Beauty: A Guide to Charm

I found myself longing for days in which I hadn't lived; days of dresses, heels, and red lipstick. Bra-burners, blah. Their story didn't compel me like the history of the way she walked, talked, smelled: the unashamed woman with the oomph about her, the fox with (gasp!) beauty and smarts. Certainly there was a how-to book from sixty years ago to guide me toward these traits. Voila, Better than Beauty: A Guide to Charm. I sought it out because I hadn't learned a thing from any bitter she-woman slob yet.

A slim primer, some of it out of fashion now, Better than Beauty was written in 1938 by Helen Valentine and Alice Thompson and reprinted by Barnes and Noble Books in 2003. In the manner of a mentor to a student, the authors are straightforward but never rude (a "better than beauty" trait, I learned later), and spot-on concerning attributes that transcend mere cosmetics: gratefulness and empathy are a couple. Practical womanhood reigns, and tips on making a clothing budget stretch without "what-was-I-thinking" bargain-chasing are as helpful as the exhortations against gossip and pharisaical windbag-ism.

I presume women of certain persuasions will be offended by the suggestion of charm. Perhaps it's because in our day that word connotes manipulative man-snare. But it meant something different to these authors, who defined it as "giving others esteem, prestige, warmth, friendliness" that "isn't done with trickery. It's done by getting rid of guile and brittle wisdom... It generates so lively an interest in other people that it overcomes narrow preoccupation with self."

A revelation? It was to me. Oh, and the secret to accessorizing was handy, too.