Don't walk across a ballroom floor swinging your arms. Don't talk or laugh loud enough to attract attention, and on no account force yourself to laugh. Nothing is flatter than laughter that is lacking in mirth. If you only laugh because something is irresistibly funny, the chances are your laugh will be irresistible too. In the same way a smile should be spontaneous, because you _feel_ happy and pleasant; nothing has less allure than a mechanical grimace, as though you were trying to imitate a tooth-paste advertisement.
In olden days and until a comparatively short while ago, a young girl's social success was invariably measured by her popularity in a ballroom. It was the girl who had the most partners, who least frequently sat "against the wall," who carried home the greatest quantity of the baubles known as "favors," who was that evening's and usually the season's belle.
But to-day although ballroom popularity is still important as a test by which a young girl's success is measured, it is by no means the beginning and end that it used to be.
As repeated several times in this book, the day of the belle is past; beaux belong to the past too. To-day is the day of woman's equality with man, and if in proving her equality she has come down from a pedestal, her pedestal was perhaps a theatrical "property" at best and not to be compared for solid satisfaction with the level ground of the entirely real position she now occupies.
A girl's popularity in a ballroom is of importance to be sure, but not greatly more so than the dancing popularity of a youth.
There was a time when "wall-flowers" went to balls night after night where they either sat beside a chaperon or spent the evening in the dressing-room in tears. To-day a young girl who finds she is not a ballroom success avoids ballrooms and seeks her success otherwhere. She does not sit in a corner and hope against hope that her "luck will turn" and that Prince Charming will surely some evening discover her. She sizes up the situation exactly as a boy might size up his own chances to "make" the crew or the football team.
The girl of to-day soon discovers, if she does not know it already, that to be a ballroom belle it is necessary first of all to dance really well. A girl may be as beautiful as a young Diana or as fascinating as Circe, but if she is heavy or steps on her first partner's toes, never again will he ask her to dance. And the news spreads in an instant.