LIPSTICK AND THE CLERGY

Evening Star, Issue 22032, 18 May 1935, Page 2

LIPSTICK AND THE CLERGY

[Written by Panashb for the ‘ Evening Star.’,] ■The village of Sodgeley, in Staffordshire, has got itself into the middle page of the newspapers. Sedgeley does not sound the kind of name to blaze its way into the cables, but on Monday it was there, sandwiched between news from Vancouver about the currency dispute in British Columbia and news from Tokio about an advisory council set up in Japan, And the news from Sedgeley was much more discussed, at tea time than the news from Vancouver or Tokio, because, though the head of the house is the only one with definite opinions on the currency, everyone has an opinion about lipstick, and it is lipstick that has brought Sedgeley into prominence. In case any of my old readers do not know what lipstick is, it must be explained that at the moment it is the most popular cosmetic. In form it resembles a red crayon, though the more expensive kinds are disguised as silver pencils. The shameless draw these pencils from their bags in public and paint Cupid’s bows on their lips at frequent intervals; for, though the better-class lipsticks are said not to come off, they have yet to be renewed after eating or other exercise. Those who are addicted to lipstick say that it prevents the lips''from cracking in -frosty leather. Those who deprecate its use say that it is manufactured from the incrustations on the sides of sewers. Although later news informs us that a clergyman has no legal right to refuse Communion to lipsticked women, such is the intention of the Vicar of Sedgeley, the Rev. Harold Marley. He further intimates that bare-legged women will be asked to leave his church, because a girl thrusting unclothed flesh before the close attention of males is guilty of gross indecency. It is, says the vicar, a cattish trick, and the male mind is bound to be diverted from God as a consequence. The Rev. Harold Marley is in the theological tradition. The first to concern himself with woman’s Sunday toilet was Paul, who exhorted the Corinthians to judge for themselves whether it was comely that a woman pray with her head uncovered. In the fourth century St. Jerome protested that those women who paint their faces with rouge and their eyes with purple scandalise the eyes of Christians. St. Augustine, a few years later, expressed himself with more restraint. He said that those women who coloured the face by the use of pigments, in order to have a ruddier or a fairer complexion, were guilty of a dishonest practice. Savonarola by his eloquence induced many Florentine women to burn their cosmetics with other vanities; and though the protests of Jerome and Augustine may have been fruitless, Paul’s instructions are followed even in the churches of the ' West. ■ The exception to the rule that the church frowns on aids to beauty is to be found in an English clergyman, a zealous if not a spiritual preacher, and one sincerely interested in the welfare of his people. He lived not in Staffordshire, but in kindlier Devon, and would never have suspected that lipstick was an outward and visible sign of a lack of spiritual ’ grace. Robert Herrick loved red lips, believing that Julia’s were the rock where rubies grew, the plantations where all the year ripe cherries were to be found. Herrick would not have ordered barelegged women to leave his chyrch, he who in an epigram wished that he could kiss his Julia’s leg, for it was ” round and white and hairless as an egg.” But Herrick is an exception, not only among churchmen, but among writers, many of whom deplore the English custom of borrowing “cosmetical conceits from barbarous nations.” Raleigh noted that the women of Guiana outdid the women of France and Italy in painting their faces with berries of the most perfect crimson and carnation. Oliver Goldsmith, in the ‘ Citizen of the World,’ complained that women outdid Nature in unkindness by using white, blue, and black powder for their hair and red powder for the face. This dishonest practice is not new. Lipsticks have been found by archaeologists in the tombs of the Pharaohs. The difference is that today they are being generally used by “ quite nice ” women. Perhaps the daughter of the vicar of Sedgeley pauses by the lych gate to paint her lips. It is unfortunate that the Rev. Harold! Marley, while acting in the best theological tradition, should have lost his temper. If he had been calm he would have remembered to say “ limbs,” which, though ambiguous, is less un-vicarlike than “ legs.” Had he not lost his temper he would not have said that thrusting unclothed flesh before males is a cattish trick. Cats are clothed in fur, and the graceful rhythmical gesture by which a cat pounces or stretches is not. a thrust. Some English vicars are inviting young men to come to church in sports clothes, but the Rev. Harold Marley is not adapting himself to his changing environment. He is not even putting up a good fight against mammon. To single out lipstick is invidious, especially if there arc in the congregation young men who use scented hair oil. But the power of tradition is strong, and the young men in the Bible who used oil were the heroes, while cosmetics are associated with Jezebel, a woman of such wickedness that her plucky bearing when she faced her death is not mentioned from the pulpit. Sometimes the priest says to his people: “ Bring your hearts and not your garments.” This is usually interpreted as a reminder to those proud in their Sunday clothes to forget them, or as a consolation to the shabby. It might equally be a hint to the preacher himself to speak to the hearts of his people, and not to be diverted by the passing fads of fkshion.