Claudia Rae Fallaw, age 12, of Columbia, for her question:
What causes freckles?
At this time of year, Andy's girl friends start worrying about freckles. Claudia and several friends want to know the facts about them. As some readers remember, Andy has given these facts before. He suspects that most people who want to know about freckles don't like theme Well he is so fond of them that he is a member in good standing of a Freckles Fan Club.
So lens first give some little known facts to the freckle worriers Andy has lived a very long time. He can report from personal experience that all the great beauties of history relied upon handsome crops of freckles. Cleopatra was spattered with attractive freckles on cheeks and forehead, Helen of Troy went one better. She also had freckles on her sandaled feet. People waited hours just to watch those feet walk by.
These and other great beauties knew why a girl should be proud of her freckles. Each of those pretty brown marks comes from the kiss of a sunbeam, And sunbeams don't kiss just anybody. Even a modern sun lamp can't give a genuine freckle, Every genuine freckle must be given by a caressing sunbeam.
Madam Pompadour lived an indoor life and rarely met a sunbeam. She also wore a lot of paint. Even had she gone outdoors, a sunbeam would have had a hard time breaking through the artwork, But that lady knew that a girl must have freckles to rate as a beauty. So.she tried to make good her loss.
She used small cut outs of dark velvet and pasted them on top of her paint job. There would be one or two on the cheeks or chin where they would be most noticeable, They were called beauty spots which, of course, is the proper name for all freckles. Of course they didn't fool anybody for a minute, And Madam P, would have been a lot healthier and therefore a lot more beautiful had she gone outdoors and got herself a crop of genuine freckles. That indoor lady would also have lived longer.
Girls and even boys often dislike their freckles only because some still, person teases them. You can write such teasing off to plain jealousy.
That's the truth, Freckles are beauty spots, a picture of health which is always beautiful to see.
If any girl disagrees with all this let her check with some older man in her life, He will also tell her what a sophisticated man thinks of a freckled complexion. If he has been places, he may name the movie stars who are properly spattered with genuine freckles.
They may not show up in pictures, which peeves Andy very much, He has freckles of rose brown on his forehead, tan ones on his cheeks and those on his nose and chin are a handsome shade of walnut. Of course there is a serious scientific explanation for freckles. But you can’t blame Andy for not explaining it to people who do not appreciate them. Such people might use the information to try to avoid them and we need more freckles in the world. There are plenty of affectionate sunbeams around eager to give them to the right people, summer and winter.