Puberty pimples.—Soon after the dawning of puberty, many girls are troubled with pimples. They usually appear on the face, often only on the forehead. The back may be affected in the same way. They usually last two, three or more years and resist every effort to remove them. The girl had just as well make up her mind to endure them until nature takes them away. It was once thought that they were evidences of the practice of the secret vice. In some cases this is true. But in most cases they are inseparable from the early years of puberty.
Treatment.—By following certain simple rules this trouble may be very much reduced. Avoid eating highly seasoned foods and rich pastries. Take plenty of open-air exercise. Massage the face with the hands, using a good quality of absorbent cream. If cold baths are begun in the summer time, so as not to shock the system, this is very valuable. During the menses, plenty of warm water should be used. Absolute cleanliness will prevent many forms of female troubles.
How to correct some kinds of homeliness.—Stringy, greasy or dull hair may be made a crown of beauty by scrupulous care, tasteful arrangement and the use of suitable decorations.
Where the bodily form is too thin or too fat, or scrawny and angular, correct habits of eating and exercise are the natural remedies. Very thin persons will usually gain flesh by taking open-air exercise and eating nutritious food. Fleshy persons can usually reduce their flesh by eating two meals a day, eating a less nutritious diet and by taking more exercise. If this advice is introduced gradually no inconvenience will be noticed.
A substitute for physical beauty.—There are some forms of physical irregularities, such as prominent ears, large and irregular teeth; a receding chin or forehead; thick or thin lips; a long or ill-shaped mouth; small, expressionless eyes; a large, flat or pug nose, none of which can be remedied by the advice given. She must develop the truest form of beauty—a charming, winsome personality, a lovely character. She will then possess a charm that cannot be excelled by any physical queen of beauty, and that she may retain long after the glow of physical loveliness has faded.
Some “musts” and “must-nots.”—She must cease frowning and learn to smile; she must repress anger and resentment, and turn the other cheek; she must not seek favors, but discover the joy of bestowing blessings on others; she must intensely interest herself in everything that will stimulate and develop the intellect, expand the soul and enlarge her spiritual vision; she must revel in the sweetest strains of music and the most bewitching beauties of art and nature. By following this advice, the naturally beautiful girl will add a new charm to her attractiveness, and the homely girl will transform her defects into seeming beauties and develop the indefinable loveliness of a beautiful character.
FOURTH DIVISION
HOW TO TEACH SOCIAL PURITY AND SEX TRUTHS TO A BOY
CHAPTER XX
A TALK TO FATHERS
The importance of fatherhood.—In the past we have written, talked and sung of the duties, responsibilities, faithfulness, sacrifice and love of motherhood. Is there any reason why the father should have less of these sacred parental qualities than the mother? Did not God in his early revelations to his chosen people honor fatherhood as much as motherhood in his relation to the training of children? In no other way has God bestowed larger capacity, power, honor and responsibility upon man than when he made him capable of fatherhood. Fatherhood—the giving of life to another—makes man a co-worker with God in the creation of human beings. This creative relation to children gives dignity, sacredness and immeasurable responsibility to fatherhood.
The father is the son’s natural teacher.—If a man at the head of a home is to measure up to the full meaning of fatherhood, he must assume the responsibility of teaching purity and sex truths to his boy, instead of leaving him to get his primary sex culture from the playground; his preparatory sex enlightenment from the street; and his complete course of sex education from the saloon, the gambling house and the brothel, where the moral atmosphere is saturated with all that is vicious and polluting; where the vilest pictures are to be seen, vilest conversation is to be heard and the vilest associations are to be formed.