DIET CRAZE.

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LVIII, Issue 10356, 17 April 1930, Page 6

DIET CRAZE.

“HUMAN POLES.” The London newspapers generally condemn the craze of too-drastic dieting which caused the suicide of Allyn King, a famous Zeigfeld Follies girl, who leaped .to her death from a window because she could not be slender. “The Daily News” declares that since the bad old days of the wasp waist, which brought suffering, illness, and death to thousands, nothing in fashion's decrees has been so injurious to women’s well-being as the subtle self-torture of semi-star-vation. The paper points out that Miss King’s diet for six months was small quantities of butterless toasted brown bread, orange juice, fruit and salad. This meant certain death to the strongest, for it lacked the food elements necessary for health and strength. The impresario (Mr C. B. Cochran) last year ordered chorus girls to eat well. He condemns the maximum weight measurements clause inserted in many film and stage contracts, and says people* do not want to’ see “telegraph poles” on the stage. The “Daily News” says:—"Artificial slimness gives the victim a hard, scraggy, harassed appearance, and does not produce the natural slimness of the delicately-made woman so beautiful to behold.”