The Arts of Beauty/Chapter 20

Without a fine head of hair no woman can be really beautiful. A combination of perfect features, united in one person, would all go for naught without that crowning excellence of beautiful hair. Take the handsomest woman that ever lived—one with the finest eyes, a perfect nose, an expanded forehead, a charming face, and a pair of lips that beat the ripest and reddest cherries of summer—and shave her head, and what a fright would she be! The dogs would bark at, and run from her in the street.

The same thing is true of man. How like a fool or a ruffian do the noblest masculine features appear if the hair of the head is bad? And, on the other hand, the most defective features are more than half redeemed by a fine head of hair. Many a dandy, who has scarcely brains enough or courage enough to catch a sheep, has enslaved the hearts of a hundred girls with his Hyperion locks.

We ought, then, to be constantly impressed with the importance of hair as a chief ornament in beauty. It is every person's business to be informed of the means ​of developing and preserving a luxurious growth of this handmaid of human charms.

And it is in the power of almost every person to have a good head of hair. But, by many, such a gift can be enjoyed only by great pains and constant attention to the laws of its growth and preservation. Hair left to take care of itself will revenge itself by making its possessor either common looking, or a monster of ugliness. Let the woman who is ambitious to be beautiful not forget this. I have known women, who had scarcely another charm to commend them, to carry off scores of hearts by a bountiful and beautiful head of hair.