(See Cover) Cultivation comes first, the proper care of the body —From the well-tended vine comes the most exquisite wine.
— Ovid, The Art of Love With a clink of vials and a wafting of odors, the mysterious rite begins. It is 6:45 a.m., and her husband is still abed, but pretty Mrs. James Locke sits before a mirrored table in her three-room San Francisco apartment, her blonde hair covered by a filmy nylon cap. Over an array of multiscented bottles, sticks, jars and tubes, Jean Locke hovers like an alchemist. She cleans her skin of night cream, anoints it with icy water — and for one brief moment shows her true face. Then, slowly, comes the metamorphosis.
Over her face she spreads a foundation cream, creating a pale and expressionless mask. She caresses her cheeks with a liquid rouge, slowly adding color to her face, tops it off by gently patting on a flesh-colored powder. She shadows her eyes with turquoise, dabs a few drops of perfume behind her ears, at her elbows, temples and wrists. With a dark pencil she shapes her eyebrows to give an artful lift to her expression, brushes her lashes with a penlike wand to emphasize her blue eyes. Finally, 20 minutes later, she spreads on the finishing touch — an orange lipstick to match her fingernail polish. As Mrs.
Locke's husband views the masterpiece she will wear to her job as secretary in an advertising office, he says: "Some day you ought to sign it, like Renoir or Picasso." Honeyed Promises. In millions of homes across the U.S. last week, millions of women celebrated similar rites in great er or lesser degree, intent on enhancing nature's boon or correcting its defects.
Never before in history has the pursuit of beauty, health and youth been so single-minded as it is in the U.S. today. Science has added more years to people's lives; U.S. women are determined to add more life to their years.
Spurring on the pursuit is the U.S.
beauty industry, which has grown into a giant by preaching with burning evange lism a message every woman wants to hear: "You, too, can be beautiful." "There are no ugly women," say the ads for Manhattan's Diedre line, "only lazy ones." Says Steve Mayham of the Toilet Goods Association: "This is an industry of ideas and imagination, and what we are selling is hope." The industry encourages hope by sur rounding itself with the most enticing come-ons since Eve described the apple.
It glamorizes its products with names sug gestive of romance, adventure, passion: such foundation powders as Pond's Angel Face, Revlon's Love-Pat and Max Fac tor's Creme Puff; such lipsticks as Rubinstein's Red Hellion, Revlon's Fire and Ice, Helen Neushaefer's Torrid and Pink Pas sion; such creams as Max Factor's Cup of Youth and Helena Rubinstein's Tree of Life. It lends mystic significance to a word such as moisturizing and nurtures a euphemistic cant in which reducing becomes slenderizing, dye becomes hair color, and diet becomes menu plan. Its slogans have entered the language: "She's lovely, she's engaged, she uses Pond's"; "The Skin You Love to Touch"; "Which Twin Has the Toni?"