The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-05-26
Dorothy Di1 Says
BY DOROTHY DIX
Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer
A Crumb of Comfort for the Ugly
Duckling.

From time imm emoria1 1t has been
held that beauty is Gods best gift to
a woman.
Poets have sung it. Artists have
painted it. It is the theme of every
novel and play. Every mother, as she
bends above the cradle OF her girl
baby, has asked the fairies to bestow
good looks upon her child, no matter
what else they denied her. The first
question that every man asks when
he hears of woman for the first
time is whether she is pretty or not.
This eternal insistence on feminine
pulchritude has led US to believe that
for girl to be born with a peaches
and cream complexion and a willowy
figure gives her the world in sling,
and that it is better for a girl not to
be born at all than to be Matched out
an ugly duckling.
We have chung to the cheerful the
DRY that she who was perfect thirty
six could not fail to make brilliant
marriage, or if she didn't, that the
beauty that launched a thousand
ships" could not fail to pull down
good job in any office that she deign-
ed to grace with her effulgent pres
ence.
For this reason, just because we are
so imbued with the old tradition that
good looks is a woman's one pest pet.
we have encouraged girls to devote
more time to marching their hair
than to cultivating their brains, and
have taught them that pair OF large,
melting, violet blue eyes will do more
to help them along in the world than
any amount OF intelligence anu eheiS BY
and efficiency.
1t appears, however, that we have
been pinning our faith to false doc
trine at least so far as the business
world is concerned, and that when
girl goes forth to seek situation
Whereby she may earn her bread and
butter. beauty is a handicap instead
of an asset to her.
1t is true that, left to their own
taste and inclination, men mlgnt pos
sibly like to fill up their offices with
maidens who were houris of loneliness,
but there are other considerations
eh-er-wives, for eXample-that make
it expedient to choose female en-
ployes who would not even take
pink ribbon in a beauty contest
This is the experience of the head
of the employment department of the
Working Girls home, who says that
a girl with carroty hair and snub
nose and a figure that looks like
bundle that mother tied up, has ten
times as good a chance to get job
as little Goldenlocks, who looks like
fashion plate.
The same authority also says that
middle age beats youth to JOB, and
that the one place where no woman
between 80 and IS need be ashamed
of her birthdays is in a business office
The reason of this is obvious. The
married man dare not have too good
looking and dainty a little stenograph-
er because of the perpetual necessity
of combating his wife's jealous sus-
picions and the unmarried man
avoids her for the very practical rea-
son that he is trying to keep from
leading himself into temptation.
In addition, experience has shown
every business man that living PIC
L Iaf1fl
of the whole place. 1t is not in mas
cu1fne nature to forget that any pref
ty woman is woman, or to refrain
from making eyes at her, or indulg-
ing in passing gallantries.
Il had to let Miss Blank 60" said
an employer when asked what had
become of a certain peachy little sec
rotary he had had. Il hated to do it,
because she was competent and as
nice a little girl as you ever saw, but
she was so good looking that there
was never a minute that half the men
in the office weren't Topped over her
desk, and the other half grouching
away in green-eyed Jealousy because
they weren't. After this, me for the
homely sister that no man will look
twice upon"
Another employer, who ran a shop
much patronized by men, explained
his preference for plain faced girl
clerks by saying that customers vast
ed too much time trying to flirt with
pretty girl employees. when man
buys a thing of a homely girl. he takes
his package and goes" said this mer
chant, but if he is waited upon by
young woman who looks like an I'M
derstudy of Lillian Russell, he hangs
around and jollies her until he has
wasted so much of her time that it
eats up the margin of profit on the
SALE
Still another reason that the plain
faced girl has a better chance of get
ting a job than little Angel Face is
because the ugly duckling knows that
she has got to make good on the job.
She's got no pink and white lowell
ness to atone for bad spelling. Meth
er do her eyes look so much like vio-
lets drenched by rain when she cries
that her employer will have the heart
to scold her for adding up columns of
figures wrong. She is on the same
footing as any man in the office and
she has to turn out as good a brand
of work.
Moreover, she gets busy trying to
master the details of whatever she
has undertaken to do because she
knows she's likely to do it for the bal
ance of her life, and she wants to
learn how to do it well enough to
draw down a good pay envelope,
whereas the beauty works half heart
eddy and with little interest in her
Jop, oeSaosC SAio way eAPoeIihS ~
exchange it for permanent situation
as a wife.
For all these reasons we may pity
the poor pretty girl when she has to
look for work, and extend our con-
CALCULATIONS to the homely girl who
finds her best recommendation in
looking useful and serviceable.
Nor in reality is beauty half as great
an advantage to a girl in securing a
husband as we think. Men are never
more inconsistent than they are in
their attitude towards this matter To
hear men talk, one would think that
they werr such beauty lovers that no
woman who was not a second Venus
would have the ghost of a chance at
catching enc of them.
But if you will look around among
the married women of your acquaint-
ance you will observe that the aver
age of good looks is extremely low