BATHERS-ANCIENT & MODERN

Greymouth Evening Star, 25 August 1928, Page 9

BATHERS-ANCIENT & MODERN

F you look through old ■ volumes of. “Punch” you will find that in the summer there used to begin every year a series of gibes against women bathers. They were represented as timici, prudish, unenterprising. They wore heavy garments of serge or some othe/ thick material. They held on to ropes, and while they did so, were contented to bob up and down in three feet of water. They sometimes took their dip under a canopy which protruded from the bathing machme. It must have been a true bill, for It reappears so regularly. No one protested. It. seems clear that the Victorian woman was not much or a bather. She was seldom able to swim, and she had an objection. to wetting her hair, which made it impossible • for her really to enjoy herself in the sea. To-day all that is changed. Mark the difference by noticing in the letters of Gertrude Bell how often she speaks of bathing in the Mesopotamian rivers. This was her daily delight in the hot season. A large party, men and yomen, swam together. She was as bold and as strong a swimmer as any. At the Lido and on the Riviera beaches, which lay themselves out to attract summer visitors, women seem to be in the majority among the brown figures ■ that are in and out of the deliciously tepid water all day long.

in a book which Sir Francis Lindley, British Minister to Norway, has lately published, he pays a very high tribute to women bathers. Woman, he says, is in her element In the water. Whatever opinion may be held ,as to her proper place in the world of politics or sport, her preeminence as a bather cannot, he declares. be denied.

In Norway, not so long ago neither men nor women wore bathing costumes. Now they are obliged to do so within a certain distance of habitations. But in Japan “the absence of false modesty” still allows everybody to bathe in a state, of nature. You sometimes find the whole population of a village bathing together quite happily “mid nodings on.” That the freedom from the Victorian “bathing-dress” is a benefit to women bathers cannot be doubted. So long as they were hampered by its weight they could not feel any freedom in the water.

The effect on health of regular exercise in the water is always good, and sometimes marvellous. . Swimming brings into play at the same time a larger number of muscles than any other sport. It opens the chest, it develops the body along natural, beautiful lines. *- And there is another consideration. “Who is so morose,” asks Sir Francis Lindley, “as to deny that the shapely • forms of the fair give additional char,m to the scene? The old Greeks knew their business when they conjured Aphrodite from the waves.” (