DRASTIC DIETING

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 169, 12 April 1930, Page 11

DRASTIC DIETING

SUICIDE OF ACTRESS London, April 2. The newspapers generally condemn the craze of too-drastic dieting which caused the suicide of Allyn King, a famous Zeigfeld Follies girt She leaped to her death from a window because she could not be slender. The “Daily News” says that since the days of the wasp waist, which brought suffering, illness, and death to thousands of women, nothing in fashion’s decrees has been so injurious to women’s well-being as the subtle self-torture of semi-starvation. The paper says Miss King’s diet for six months consisted of small quantities of butterless toasted brown bread, orange juice, fruit, and salad. This meant certain death to the strongest, it asserts, for it lacked the food elements necessary for health and strength. Mr. C. B. Cochran, theatrical manager, 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.”