Beauty Advice from the Nineteen Twenties: Keep Your Chin(s) Up

Ad for Catherine McCunes’s Silk Muscle Lifting Mask, January 1928, Delineator magazine. “Note How Mask Lifts and Supports Sagging Facial Muscles.”

Title of a page of beauty advice by Celia Caroline Cole, Delineator, May 1927, p. 35.

The cherubs turn away in distress from the sight of a double chin.

Cherubs avert their eyes from a double chin in this illustration by L. Fevrier. 1927.

In this 1918 ad for rubber reducing garments, a chin strap could be bought for seventy-five cents.

In 1918, the Bailey Rubber Company sold reducing garments, including a “chin band for reducing double chin.” The rubber garment idea was to dissolve body fat by sweating — like rendering lard from a side of beef. Fat and water, however, are not the same thing.

Catherine McCune promised that wearing her Muscle Lifting Mask would wipe out wrinkles, too. Ad from Delineator, Oct. 1927.

Elizabeth Arden ran a series of ads with this disturbing image; this woman is not recovering from surgery, but receiving a beauty treatment:

The Elizabeth Arden salons sold cold cream, skin tonic, astringents,  and other beauty preparations. This image comes from an ad in Delineator, April 1925. “Tones, firms, whitens and refines the skin.” “Use a Patter for brisk resilient strokes.”

This ad is selling Elizabeth Arden’s Amiral “reducing soap” “for a double chin:”

Ad for Elizabeth Arden’s Amiral Soap, November 1924. “Absorbed by the skin, it breaks down fat by a natural harmless process, stimulates circulation to remove fatty waste.” [If only spot reduction were that easy….]

It’s probably not a coincidence that Delineator’s beauty writer, Celia Cole,  vouched for the efficacy of astringent soap, “skin food,” and even salon reducing treatments that used electricity. She doesn’t name the salon, but those monthly ads paid for by Elizabeth Arden may have had some influence on the editorial choices of Delineator magazine.

From “Chins in the Air”, by Celia Cole. Delineator, May 1927, p. 35.

Those Elizabeth Arden ads offer the “Arden Patter” (for spanking your double chin) for five dollars. Five dollars! In 1925 !

“Perfectly scientific” beauty treatments as described in Delineator, May 1927. To be fair, Celia Caroline Cole also recommended exercise.

Illustration by Brunner for an article on weight loss, Delineator, September 1928. “Floors trembled and ceilings fell from woman’s effort to get thin. Somebody wrote a book about calories…. The lettuce business increased six-fold in ten years.”

Compared to chin “patters,” pseudo-scientific ointments, and electric shocks, maybe the Silk Muscle Lifting masks weren’t the craziest way to spend money in a attempt to preserve your youth.

Complete ad for Silk Muscle Lifting Mask, Delineator, January 1928.

Complete ad for Muscle Lifting Mask, Delineator, October 1927. It was worn while sleeping, or for a few minutes every day. “Much less expensive than plastic surgery or deep peel.” [Did you realize those treatments were available in the 1920’s?]

A no-longer youthful woman ponders her reflection, May 1927. Delineator.

If you are interested in the history of fashion for the mature woman, you might enjoy a visit to AmericanAgeFashion.

Another, [perfectly unscientific] series of ads recommended chewing Wrigley’s gum as a beauty treatment for the facial muscles. I took me three blog posts to share all the ads I found: Chew Gum for Beauty (Part 1), Part 2, and Part 3. The ad above is from 1934. “Keep [your cheek line] from looking old and saggy; chew Double Mint gum. This gentle exercise 5 to 10 minutes daily aids in toning up unused and lazy facial muscles. Try this new Beauty Treatment.”