Lessons I never learned

Not for the first time in recent weeks, "uh oh":

Alice was helping me shop for a new dress at the local thrift store. We were going through a heap of dresses we'd culled from the racks, but after awhile she lost her focus as sartorial critic and began vamping in front of the mirror herself. She'd been singing Christmas carols when she stopped and said matter-of-factly,

"I know how girls get boys to like them."

How, I asked.

"They close their eyelids halfway," she said, trying to suit the action the word.

Huh, I asked. How do you know that?

"I see it all the times in magazines!" she said confidently. "They don't open their eyes wide like this, and smile and wave and say hello. Don't do that if you like someone. That doesn't make them fall in love. Instead they close their eyelids halfway and walk by without saying anything. That's what you have to do. Then the boys fall in love and ask to marry them."

Later Alice shared this insight with Edith in the car. Edith agreed and expanded, "Yes, and it helps if they're wearing a sleeveless sparkly outfit in really inconvenient weather for that sort of thing."

I think Edith's answer was laced with subtle sarcasm about the follies of advertisements. But Alice, I fear, was in dead earnest.

Someone, please help.