Lifestyle Choices

Gold has long been used to adorn its lucky wearer; its lustrous beauty and intense natural color give it a unique appeal. Gold can be found in shades of yellow, white, pink, and green; each is lovely and special in its own right. Frequently, contemporary jewelry is “tricolor,” combining yellow, pink, and white gold to create a distinctly modern feel.

When shopping for bracelets, chains, pins, rings, watches, and earrings, remember that all that glitters may not be gold! Always look for the karat mark, e.g., 18k, 14k, 10k, stamped on the piece to indicate that you’re buying the real thing. The karat mark refers to the purity of the gold. Twenty-four karat is 100 percent pure, or twenty-four parts gold, and is considered too soft for use in jewelry. It must be alloyed with other special metals to increase workability and strength. Eighteen-karat gold is 18 parts gold and six parts other metals; fourteen and ten karat, are, respectively, fourteen and ten parts gold. These last three are considered the best choice for lasting jewelry. (more…)

• Don’t toss pearls carelessly into a purse or jewel box where they could be scratched by other pieces.
• Don’t expose your pearls to hairsprays or acid-based cosmetics and perfumes.
• Never clean pearls with harsh chemicals or abrasives.
• Do treat your pearls gently. Place them in a chamois bag or wrap in tissue before putting them away. Best bet: a quilted jewel case or bag to cushion them.
• Do wait until after applying cosmetics, perfume, and other products before putting on pearls.
• Do wash your pearls with mild soap and water once in a while to remove any traces of makeup or fragrance.
• Do take your pearls to your jeweler for restringing once a year. Ordinary wear can weaken and stretch the nylon thread on which pearls are strung.
• Do have pearls strung with knots between them. This will prevent loss if breakage does occur.

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A fine watch is not only practical but a great fashion asset too! Learn to balance beauty and utility in a single choice, or maybe you’ll want two or three watches, to match your outfits, and your moods.

• Mechanical watches are the traditional “wind up” variety that operate by means of a mainspring, which the wearer winds by turning the crown on the outside of the watch.
• Automatic or self-winding watches “wind” themselves. The action of the wearer’s arm causes a weight behind the movement to rotate, which in turn winds the mainspring. These watches can also be wound manually.

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You really should indulge yourself and have a professional manicure at least once; save your baby-sitting cash or weekly allowance and go ahead and splurge! Think of it as more than an indulgence, however; learning tips from a pro will enable you to give yourself perfect manicures at home. If you have any problem tendencies, a good manicurist will point them out and offer helpful advice for combatting them.

Until you make your first appointment, study the list below, in which a New York City nail-care expert reveals her method for flawless fingers: (more…)

In browsing through stores and reading magazines, you will find that nail polish is available in dozens and dozens of delightful colors, from sultry wines, scarlets, and mahoganies to berry brights, creamy pastels, and shimmering iridescents. How to decide on the colors that are right for you? Read on!

• The Brights.Clear tones of scarlet, rose, pink, coral, tomato, and tangerine. To wear these colors, your nails should be medium length to long, well shaped, strong, and resist chipping and flaking. Brights look well on fair to medium skin tones. These colors are not the best choice, however, if you frequently engage in activities that cause chipping, such as typing or swimming. Also avoid them if your fingers are short or stubby; bold, bright tones will only accentuate the shape.

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Your poor feet! Walking, running, dancing, jogging, basketball and pogo sticks, stiletto heels and pointy toes—do they ever get a rest from all the abuse they’re forced to take? The tips below will help get your feet looking—and feeling—their very best, day or night. You don’t have to visit a fancy beauty salon to benefit from these footwise suggestions.

1. For swollen feet that are really beat, soak in cool salt water for five minutes. Dry carefully and moisturize.
2. To step up circulation, soak feet for five minutes in shallow footbath or tub of warm water; switch to cool, and keep soaking for an additional five minutes. You’ll be ready to dance the night away.

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But Does It Last?

One of the most commonly asked fragrance questions is, “How can I make my fragrance last longer?” A number of factors contribute to the answer, ranging from personal body chemistry (do you know, for instance, that oily skin retains a fragrance longer than dry skin?) to the weather (soaring summer temperatures cause Your scent to fade sooner than in the winter months). But take heart: here are some suggestions on how to keep a good thing going. (more…)

One of the most subtle but nonetheless powerful of our five senses is smell. Perhaps it is precisely because we don’t have a very highly developed olfactory sense when compared with other animals that what we do smell has a particularly potent effect on us. A pleasing smell or fragrance can linger in the mind and in the imagination like a haunting melody and trigger memories and feelings in a highly visceral way. Learning to appreciate and use fine fragrances is part of the development and refinement of this elusive sense, and one of the most alluring aspects of becoming a woman.

The cosmetic use of fragrance has had a long and varied history. For instance, it is known that Cleopatra used perfumed oils to enhance her legendary beauty. Later the Greeks and Romans refreshed themselves between courses at banquets with the application of water that had been perfumed by flowers. (more…)

The dozens of American and European scents now available for your sniffing pleasure can almost all be placed in one of the seven basic groups described by the Fragrance Foundation:

Single florals—sweet, heady fragrances that seek to capture the essence of a single flower, such as rose, carnation, violet, or lilac. Examples: Bellodgia by Caron; Dior, Dior, by Christian Dior; Muguet des Bois by Coty. (more…)

Now that you have some idea of the kinds of fragrance that are available to you, you need to determine your own fragrance type or personality. Relax, though; you won’t find it hard work at all. Choosing the perfect scent will be an enjoyable experience.

Experts recommend that you sample a maximum of three fragrances when shopping for a new scent. If you spray on too many, your nose loses the ability to distinguish between them. Also, apply the fragrance directly to your skin when testing it; the true qualities of a perfume or toilet water are not revealed when sampled only from the bottle. Dab it on, and allow the warmth of your body to develop the fragrance on your skin. Ideally, you should wait at least ten minutes after you have applied the fragrance to decide whether or not it is for you. That lets the alcohol evaporate and the blending of the fragrances with your skin’s own unique oils to be at its zenith. Now take a whiff! (more…)

• Don’t hoard your fragrances. Unlike fine wines, they do not improve with age. If you insist on saving your perfumes and colognes only for “special occasions,” you may open the bottle to find that they have evaporated or spoiled.
• Do keep perfumes and other fragrances away from extreme temperatures, which may upset their delicate composition. Cologne and toilet water may be stored in the refrigerator (never the freezer), but not perfume—it’s too fragile. Don’t store fragrances where they will be exposed to intense, direct sunlight; the strong rays may damage or spoil them.

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Posture is another important part of movement. But for most women posture is an ugly word, reminiscent of agonizing school periods in which one was urged to “Pull your stomach in, for heaven’s sake, and stand up straight.” No matter how hard you try or how long you hold your breath you can never seem to get it right. That is because this kind of posture is something imposed on the body from outside. It should be nothing of the sort. Good posture is quite simply the most efficient use of the skeleton to keep the body erect and give it freedom of movement. It is a way of standing, moving, and sitting that doesn’t put excessive strain on the muscles or joints anywhere in the body. It comes from within and is most natural. (more…)

There is more health and beauty through natural movement than you will get from vigorous aerobic exercise alone. For no matter how far you run, no matter how fine an athlete or dancer you are, unless your muscles and joints move freely through the full range of motions possible for them you quite simply won’t feel fully alive. Neither will you have full freedom of locomotion nor will you get the complete enjoyment of your sensations.

The body is the medium of experience. Everything you do—walking, writing, playing, working, making love—you do through its movements. In fact, all life is made up of the action of living flesh and muscle on moving joints and bones. These movements are composed of finely controlled positions and motions. When your joints and muscles are supple and mobile your body remains free, glowing, alive and highly resistant to stress. To get it that way, unless you are a child or unless you happen to be gifted with exceptional flexibility, you need to teach your muscles to stretch to their limits and encourage your joints to move fully. (more…)

Most women become aware of the poor condition of neglected muscles when a strain occurs, but there are various tests you can run on specific muscles to find out how strong and resilient yours are. One in particular probably gives more indication than any other of how susceptible you are to back pain. It is used by one of Europe’s top back experts, who taught it to me. And it is particularly useful for women after childbirth.

Lie flat on your back on the floor. With one hand stretched out and fingers together, press the tips of the fingers against the center line of the abdomen at the navel. Now raise your head off the floor. If the rectus abdominis muscle (the long, flat muscle on the front of the abdomen) parts, allowing your fingers to press easily into the abdominal cavity, then your abdominal wall is definitely not strong enough. (more…)

Other things contribute to back troubles too—like poor nutrition, which results in stored waste in the tissues and the accumulation of fat, which puts far too much strain on heavily taxed muscles. You shouldn’t sleep on a bed that is too soft either—it won’t give enough support to your spine

and there is always the danger of hanging on to muscle tension left over from the daytime or putting too much of an unnatural curve in your spine during sleep. But you needn’t go out and buy an expensive orthopedic mattress. A simple, firm mattress on top of a board will do fine. (more…)

4. Discover Your Own Guidelines

Find out how many different principles and ways of managing stress you can successfully incorporate into your life. Then do it. Stress in a relationship can be a way of improving not only the quality of the relationship but also the value that one places on it. This demands facing discontent clearly and squarely and expressing it in a way that doesn’t try to make someone else responsible for it. For instance, there are two ways of complaining when your mate squeezes the toothpaste in the middle. One is, “My God, you did it again. What’s wrong with you?” and the other, “You know, I have a problem. I am really bothered by people squeezing the toothpaste in the middle. I can’t seem to get over it. I’d be grateful if you didn’t do it. It would help me a lot.” (more…)

Long-term stress can destroy your good looks, your vitality, and eventually your health. But contrary to popular belief, that doesn’t mean there is anything intrinsically dangerous in stress. On the contrary, stress is the spice of life—the challenge just waiting to be met, the excitement of something new and unknown, the wonderful, exhilarating feeling when adrenalin flows through your body and makes you feel ready for anything. It only means that if you do not know how to move from the active, stressed state of mind and body into the passive state of psychophysical relaxation at will, then you, like most people (for few have this skill naturally), are likely to find yourself stuck in the stressed state for long periods. And if it happens often enough and lasts long enough, you can become physically or mentally ill. (more…)

Sailing

Sailing is a delight for the freedom of moving with the wind in the fresh air, but it is more often than not a lot of hard work too—both mentally and physically. Problems appear from nowhere and you have to cope—and you do. It is a demanding, rigorous sport and it gives you a great sense of achievement every time you do it. You can be any age to learn to sail, and you don’t have to be fit in order to take it up. Start either by joining a club where you can get instruction or by crewing on friends’ boats. If you don’t know any sailors, look at the advertisements in one of the yachting magazines; there are always people looking for crew, either experienced or inexperienced, and it costs you nothing— they get help on the boat and you get experience. (more…)

To some extent the angry liberationists are right. We as women have been raised to believe that we are dependent, selfless, sweet and passive creatures. The cultural roles handed down to us from generation to generation demand the needs of others. By learning to conform to these feminine roles, although we may not be consciously aware of it we suppress natural qualities within us that don’t fit into the notion we have of “feminine”—such things as physical strength, independence, pride, and anger. For in our culture these qualities are traditionally labeled “male,” although, in truth, both male and female qualities exist in all of us and need to work together if we are to use our potential and are to express our wholeness and individuality as a human being of whatever sex. (more…)

So in personal terms, for the sake of mental and physical health and beauty it is important that every woman develop an awareness of her own personal relationship to stress and come to terms with it. This is all part of what is known as “stress management.” There are many different methods of going about it. If you are familiar with them you can choose which ones work best for you and you will be able to live with your own stress, an inevitable part of every human life, and enjoy it instead of allowing it to turn to distress and make you miserable, ill, and old before your time. (more…)