Education: Beauty and the Brain

While the rest of Europe buzzed with rumors of war, Finland last week was concerned with beauty. Issue: a woman’s right to compete in a beauty contest. Believing she had set a bad example, the Government-operated Teachers Training College at Heinola expelled curly, blonde, blue-eyed Student Sirkka Salonen, who was preparing to be a teacher of elementary school children and recently was chosen Miss Europe of 1938 by a jury in Copenhagen. Indignantly appealing to the Minister of Education to rebuke the college for its puritanism by reinstating Miss Salonen, Finland’s press pointed out she was a high-ranking student, was the only competitor in the beauty contest who did not use cosmetics.