I came across the depressingly titled “Ugly-Girl Papers” This
seems like something my mother would have given an awkward, gangly, thirteen
year old me if we lived in the 1870s. I assume this book would be given as a
gift because I can’t see any girl picking this up in a bookshop and not feeling
a rush of embarrassment. She would then keep it, not on a bookshelf but wrapped
up in a rag, tucked under her bed or hidden in a pantry, only to sneak peaks at
it when her family is out. Most of the recipes and suggestions in this book
include toxic chemicals such as ammonia, nitrate of mercury, sulfurous
acid (a chemical found in acid rain,) and borax.
As much as this book tries to reassure the “ugly
reader” that there is hope for her, it perpetuates a lie that is all too
familiar to us today: “you are ugly and need products to fix you.” Makeup is
fun and that is all it ever should be- no one should feel that they are not
able to leave the house without caking pounds of makeup on their face. It
really is upsetting to read this book; you can imagine the ladies of low self-esteem
who heard enough lies that they put numerous poisons on themselves.
“The bonsai tree in the attractive pot
could have grown eighty feet tall
on the side of a mountain
till split by lightning.
But a gardener
carefully pruned it.
It is nine inches high.
Every day as he
whittles back the branches
the gardener croons,
It is your nature to be small and cozy,
domestic and weak;
how lucky, little tree,
to have a pot to grow in.
With living creatures
one must begin very early
to dwarf their growth:
the bound feet,
the crippled brain,
the hair in curlers,
the hands you
Some of excerpts from Ugly Girl Papers, some are sad to read, others are interesting to see how they used items:
