The Colored Girl Beautiful will take care of her clothes. She will learn to press and sponge, also the use of cleaning fluids, and to forbear from sitting carelessly on coats and other apparel.
Work clothes should be becoming in color and style. While one is buying or making she may as well select attractive models. When one is attired in unbecoming clothes, unconsciously the face reflects the thought in unbecoming lines. One's voice takes on a coarser, unbecoming tone, and the poise takes on an unbecoming attitude. For the same reason our girls should not wear men's old hats or paper bags on their heads.
One should aim to select something becoming that the face and body may always appear at their best. One must be on beauty parade ALL the time to get beauty lines.
Appropriate clothes should be worn at all times. Pink or blue satin or silk dresses should not be worn on Sunday or at church, even if one can afford them. It is bad taste and sets a bad example to poorer girls who sometimes sell their honor, even their lives for these perishable, inappropriate costumes.
In every mind there is a picture gallery of our friends and the people we meet. Sometimes the pictures that we carry are not the best ones. One is often caught unawares in soiled, unbecoming garments. It is not necessary in this day and time to give an ugly picture of ourselves.
We should be particular to give the best possible, most pleasing picture to others at all times. There should be no "being caught." One should be prepared early in the morning, any time of day, and all through the night.
On the streets and as the street cars pass our homes, colored people should give the best pictures possible of themselves, if they can not of the houses in which they live. We are a poor people but we can be quiet, clean, becomingly and fittingly dressed. We must stifle the desire to be conspicuous unless it is to be conspicuous by quietness.