When I was 10 or so, I found a stack of hardback Reader's Digest best-of anthologies on a bookcase in my granddad's basement. I asked my granddad if I could borrow one, and he said "Take em all. Have at it, kiddo." And I did. I spent the next week of that long hot summer utterly engrossed in Reader's Digest.
The anthologies (I think he gave me three volumes) contained quite the mixed bag of short stories, journalistic feature stories, opinion pieces, and essays, humorous and otherwise. I think I read the books cover to cover, because that is what I do, but I don’t remember many specifics. I remember a feature story about the U.S. Military Academy at West Point; its history, the admissions process, the rigor of West Point’s life and curriculum. I remember a quote: “They give you a million dollar education for free, but they shove it down your throat, nickel by nickel.” I don’t think women were even admitted to West Point at the time that I read this article, so I never imagined myself trying to measure up to those exacting standards.
I do however, remember resolving never to hitchhike or to pick up a hitchhiker after reading a hair-raising story about hitchhiking. Apparently, the roads of the United States in the middle of the 20th century were plagued with murderous hitchhikers who killed their drivers and homicidal drivers who picked up hitchhikers and murdered them in particularly horrible ways. There was also an article about Alfred Hitchcock. I don’t remember much about that article, except that I learned what a McGuffin is. MacGuffin? Six of one, half dozen of the other. Tomayto, to-mah-to. Whatever.
One Readers’ Digest anthology volume was also my first and last exposure to Max Shulman’s Dobie Gillis short stories. To an 11-year-old inner city Catholic school girl in 1976, girl-crazy middle-class 1950s suburban teenage boy Dobie Gillis and his beatnik friend Maynard G. Krebs were no more relatable than space aliens. I didn’t like science fiction, and I didn’t like Dobie Gillis.
Then as now, I was willing to read just about anything, and you never know when you’ll come across some interesting bit of information that will later come in quite handy. Those Readers’ Digest books might be one of the reasons why you always want me on your trivia team. But even the stories that were interesting or well-written enough to be enjoyable reading regardless of subject matter did not really speak directly to me. At that time (much like the present day lol), stories written by and about women were women’s stories, while stories written by and about men were just stories, presumed to be of interest to all. I understood this, and so I had no expectation that my grandfather’s books would contain anything written just for me. And then I stumbled across "How Beautiful With Mud," Hildegarde Dolson's hilarious essay about a beauty treatment gone terribly wrong.
Even then, I knew there was something not quite right about Alfred Hitchcock, and I could not have cared less about Dobie Gillis and Maynard G. Krebs and their unrequited love for cheerleaders and prom queens. And of course, I knew I wasn’t going to West Point, so I didn’t really need to read all about the appointment and admissions process and the brutal first year program of hazing and discipline. But a teenage girl obsessed with a beauty product? Now that was compelling reading.
At 11, I was trying to still be the little girl I'd been just a year earlier, the little girl who was never going to fuss over her hair, never going to carry a purse, and definitely never going to put anything on her face other than soap followed by water. But deep in my heart of hearts, I knew that I wasn't that girl anymore. I didn’t like makeup yet (and other than lipstick, I never really would) but I liked nail polish and hair accessories and cute clothes. I even liked handbags, a little bit. And 11 or so is when my skin first started to break out, so I was very very very much interested in miracle skin potions and unguents and salves and serums. I was (and sadly, I remain) 100 percent susceptible to claims of miraculous results. I’m always willing to hand over my money in exchange for the promise of clear and soft and glowing skin in a bottle or a jar or a tube.
I can't find the essay online anywhere, nor can I find Dolson's book We Shook the Family Tree, where “How Beautiful With Mud” was first published. But as I remember the story, young Hildegarde, age 14 or 15, found a magic beauty clay product at her neighborhood drugstore; and then she spent weeks earning and saving enough money to buy the product, which she was sure would leave her glowing, radiant, and utterly transformed.
After many weeks of babysitting and odd jobs that paid a dime here and a quarter there (the story takes place during the Depression, I think), Hildegarde had scraped together the $4.95 price of the magic beauty clay, the name of which I cannot remember, although I am quite sure that the product name did contain the word “magic.” She laced up her saddle shoes, jumped on her bicycle, raced to the drugstore, and handed over her hard-earned cash for the longed-for jar of rare, mineral-infused, purifying mud and she raced back home to plaster her adolescent face with it.
The results, as Ms. Dolson wrote, were not as expected. When she tried to wash off the magic beauty clay with gentle splashes of lukewarm water, as instructed, she found that the water was no match for the clay, which had apparently hardened to form a cement-like casing on her poor face. She scrubbed with hotter water and a washcloth, to no avail. She waited for the stuff to dry again, and then tried chipping at it with something–a screwdriver, maybe. Finally, after an hour of chipping and scrubbing, Hildegarde had a face that was free of dirt, oil, makeup residue, and several layers of skin. Rather than a softly pink clear glowing complexion, the magic beauty clay had left her with angry fiery red raw inflamed skin, abraded in some places from the scrubbing, and in no way beautiful. The inflammation took several days to calm down and heal, during which time Hildegard forswore all further beauty schemes and plans.
*****
I’m sure that Elon Musk is going to ruin Twitter even more than it’s already ruined that is but I do still enjoy a good Twitter thread. A few weeks ago, I came across a thread dedicated to drugstore beauty products of the 1980s. A few people on this thread went off-topic, sharing memories of 80s clothes, movies, and music as if any of those topics need any further discussion or examination on social media or anywhere else in the discourse. People like this are why we can’t have nice things. Most people, however, understood the assignment, as they say on the Internet. They stayed on topic. People remembered all kinds of beauty and grooming products of that era; everything from staggeringly expensive (even by today’s standards) creams and potions (we’d call them serums today, I suppose) kept behind elegant glass counters at John Wanamaker and Bonwit Teller to your everyday garden-variety Cover Girl and Noxzema products. About Noxzema, I could write a whole thread myself, but I will spare you. For now.
The thread began to specialize a bit as more and more people posted about two items: Ten O Six Lotion by Bonne Bell and Aapri apricot scrub. These two products were insanely popular in the 80s (I myself used both of them when I was in high school) despite their absolutely dreadful effects on a person’s skin. The Ten O Six was probably almost all alcohol. It stung like crazy when you applied it with your cotton ball, and it dried your face out, leaving it with the texture of a piece of typing paper. Aapri scrub was a paste made of some kind of viscous stuff mixed with roughly ground apricot pits. I never actually drew blood when I scrubbed my face with Aapri, but several of the women on this thread claimed to have done so and I have no reason to doubt them. Aapri was abrasive, to say the least.
All of us who commented and replied to comments on this very funny thread agreed that we now have no idea why it was considered good or necessary to strip the top layer of skin off our faces every day, several times a day, but it was. The idea that aggressive face scrubbing followed by application of stinging astringent was effective and beneficial was common knowledge and received wisdom among magazine-reading young girls in 1982 or so. As the discussion narrowed from the general landscape of cosmetic products in the 1980s to the very specific memories associated with these two products, people asked one question over and over again, the same question that Hildegard Dolson asked herself as she surveyed the disastrous results of her magic beauty clay experiment: Why did I do this? Why DO I do this?
*****
I do wish I could read the essay again. I’m sure that if I dig around the corners of the internet a bit, I can find it, but I try to avoid digging around the corners of the internet. You never know what you’re going to find that you might not want to find. Some things, once seen, cannot be unseen. Talking to you, Congressman. Thank God that Twitter warned me not to watch that video and thank God that I was wise enough to heed that warning, because I've heard some things.
Anyway I don’t know if Hildegarde Dolson stayed true to her vow never to attempt any beautifying schemes again. I myself have had more than one bad run-in with groundbreaking miracle products that did more harm than good but I’ve never given up. I’ve never sworn off on new beauty treatments.
As far as appearance goes, a person gets what she gets and then does her best. No one gets a second shot at the genetic lottery. But hope springs eternal, doesn’t it? And that is why we all know the reason why we keep trying these crazy schemes. That’s why Hildegarde Dolson handed over her babysitting money in exchange for a literal jar of mud. That’s why there are lengthy Twitter threads wherein many women recount our sufferings for the sake of beauty. There’s always the chance that there’s that one dress or that perfect haircut or that weird-sounding but no-denying-the-science-behind-it serum or treatment that will make ALL. THE. DIFFERENCE. It never hurts to try, even when it does hurt a little.
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