OUR BABIES.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 9, 10 July 1909, Page 15

OUR BABIES.

~r • r— {By Hygeia.)

Published under the auspices ol tho Society for the Promotion oi the Health of Women and Children. The following communications have been received from one of our correspondents. AYe earn.es.tly commend thorn to the attention of mothers and those in charge of children and yqung girls. We shall go further into the matter next week, but meantime it suffices to say that the course of muscular training which our correspondent hit on was the proper and natural means of making her self fit to stand alone unaided by artilical .support. She has made her muscles effect what steel and whalebone could only clumsily imitate in the \vay_ of support, and that at the expense oi movements of chest and abdomen, in addition to a displacement of deep-seated internal structures. THE LETTER. "Having ,been much interested in Dr. Truby King's lecture containing reference to the wearing of corsets, it has occurred to me, as it has often done, that a, practical hint as to the best way of dressing without the customary firmness ib needed. Many women are inclined to reform, but do not know how to set, about it. If you can make any use of the enclosed paper (originally written for a girls' club here) I shall be glad. Its publication in 'Hygeia's column might be of service. I should prefer that my name was not, disclosed." WOMAN AND THE CORSET. For years we have been warned against the corset. It has been lectured against, harangued against, condemned in un1 stinted terms.' Every book on physiology and hygiene devotes chapters to recounting its dangers. It has been proved to be the cause of an enormous amount of suffering to women and of weakness in their offspring. But woman still clings to it; will not let it go. Oi late years it has been considerably modified and improved, certainly, and the more sensible women take care to buy the modified article. A few of tne stronger-natured have given it up altogether; a fair number of young girls have not yet been bullied by stupid _ mothers into wearing it. But the great majority of women still buckle themselves up in this comfortless combination of bone and steel and stitching, stifling a somewhat stirred conscience with tha reflection that they really cannot do without it. And they cannot. That is the rub. They have .never been shown how to do without it. All their lives they have used the corset as a support both for themselves and their clothes. Suddenly they are asked to do away with this support, this girdle of strength and firmness on which they have unconsciously grown to place the most utter dependence; and nothing is given to take its place. No wonder that a few days' trial convinces them that an aching floppiness is the only result of the desertion of the corset. They naturally argue that what is unbearable for them can scarcely be bearable for their daughters. Hence the perpetuation of the cor6et and its evils. A GIRL'S EXPERIENCE. And yet, if one only receives the necessary hint, it is quite a simple matter to dress comfortably and delightfully without it. Perhaps the experience of a New Zealand^ girl who has thought -the matter out may give enlightenment to those who need it. / As a baby, she was subjected to the usual binding methods so favoured by mothers and nurses of years ago, and still unfortunately not extinct. As a little girl she wore a hot and uncomfortable strapped thing of jean, whose only office seemed to be that of wrinkling into the most tu-esomo places. As a girl in her early teens, she was instructed into the stiff mysteries of a real grown-up corset, with its stepl bars that would insist on snapping till her muscles learnt to lie still and rigid behind them. It was tiresome not to be able to bend and twibt as one felt in-, clined, and the whole thing was dreadfully uncomfortable, but, of course, it, had to be worn ! She soon grew accustomed to it, and ceased to rebel. When about twenty-three she read •«. book in which the absurdity, the unhealthfulness, and the positive danger of the corset were pointed out. For a few days the girl's face wore a disturbed look. REBELLION. Next she announced, "I'm going to give up corsets." "Nonsense!" said her mother. "You'll ' look a fright il you do." "You'll feel wretched," said her .sister. "I know. I tried it once." "I'm going to do it," said the girl. And she did —for two days. Those were two days of misery. ' The feeling of floppiness and weakness was discouraging ; the weight of her skirts on her Boft "flesh was cruel. On the third day she crept into her corsets again and thought hard. She arrived at two definite conclusions. First, that she mu&t devise some way of taking the drag of her skirts off her hips, second, that the muscles of her body had become so weak and flabby I from years of disuse that a few weeks of physical exercise were absolutely neces- j sary before her freedom could become enjoyment. i She thought some more. Then she went out and bought a yard or two of wide elastic and some big safety-pins. She brought these home and made sua penders of them, to go over her shoulders and bear all the weight of, her I clothes. ' VICTORY. Then corsets came off again', nevet to veturn. For three weeks she diet physical exercises night and morning to tone up her muscles. Housework helped wonderfully, and then the tennis season came in, and the victory was won. For a month or more she l&oked undeniably floppy —she was a plump littlt girl at any time —but after that she straightened up wonderfully. The freed muscles worked back into their right places, and hardened into a healthy firmness that gave her a most pleasing carriage. She looked actually smaller round the waist and hips than when in corsets. And then the delightful feeling of it! Do you know the joy of tennis and golf with no steel bar to contend against, in stooping and swinging? Do you know the refreshing coolness of a summer epent without corsets? "Girls," she would say, "you don't know you're alive with those things on. I wouldn't wear them again jfor all the tea in China. i "I shall never be fat and lumpy when I am old," she would add, merrily, "for every bit of flesh will be in its nat- _ oral place, not pushed into hideous balls ' and creases by corsets. Girls, take tbet" off." GIULS, TAKE THE*; OFF! Tho phrase is a good one. Pity it is that it cannot be sent echoing-through the len.L'th and breadth of our country. Girls, take them off ! Wo are a new people, beginning wheie older countries etop, not afraid, in our vigorous youth, to institute reforms where reform is needed. s Would not this be one of the Grandest reforms the world has ever card of? Would it not be a fine thing for New Zealand if woman here broke the bonds of her worst slavery, choosing health instead of suffering for herself and her posterity '<. A splendid race of men and women might be reared in these beautiful islands it mothers would only cast away for ever ancient and dangerous traditional customs.