DANGEROUS BEAUTY, SURGERY

Manawatu Times, Volume LIII, Issue 6668, 23 July 1928, Page 12

DANGEROUS BEAUTY, SURGERY

The art of plastic surgery made gi'ca 1 ’ strides after the war, and wise and respected doctors spent endless time and pains on remodelling noses and rearranging cars that had been disfigured in Prance, -writes Lady Adams in the Auckland Star. When practised property, there is a legitimate place for that branch of surgery, but there ought to bo small room anywhere for what is known in America as * ‘ decorative surgery.” Some practitioners claim that they can remove crow’s feet, drooping eyelids, wrinkles on the brow, and neck, and double chins. Some, of them can, but here on the Pacific Coast there are a large—-and floating—-number of practitioners who make sad botches of-the job. Of course, there is • face-lifting, a folly of the beauty cult' that often ends tragically.. Never was the sad old. French proverb, ”11 faut souffrir pour ctrc belle,” truer.than-it is to-day when, because of short skirts, some women go to hospitals to. have their bow legs straightened, and others submit to having their superfluous fat cut off. Many women have their little toes cut off, saying that without them they can wear smarter shoes and that they walk with more so perhaps they do, after a successful operation, but that particular amputation is a.particularly cranky one. Some of these practitioners call themselves by quaint names; I got a circular the other day 'from a "Doctor of- SagliffplogyJ” who claims to be "master of that art which promotes and preserves body, health, and.comfort. ” >

A friend of mine, fifty-five, charming, vivacious and healthy, with clear eyes, a comely face, lots of nice, nnbobbed grey hair and plenty ofi little laughter ■wrinkles, told me that when she was twenty-five she saw wrinkles beginning and sat down to review her position. She made -up her mind that; as her particular typo of looks depended more on good health than on pots on her dres-' sing table she would give herself a little ordinary daily care, would'live wisely, and would spend neither time nor money on face massage or on any other beauty helper that was not for the definite good of her health. She has kept an account of what money she would havo spent yearly had she pursued a beauty-parlour existence —the yearly budget has gone up incredibly since her modest, thirty-year-old suppositions budget was begun—and she declares that when she and her husband went round the world last year her share of the time and the greater part of the cost of her trip came out of the hours and dollars she had saved by abstaining from facials, water-waves, manicures and the various enterprises that in America go under the term “treatments. ’’ I must own, however, that nobody thinks about her looks or clpthcs; it is her radiance that carries her right into people’s hearts.

There was once a woman who saw old age creeping - up behind her like a surly grey ape, scowling at her from the shadows. What was she to do? Should she leave Mm there or haul him out into the sun beside her and say bluntly: "There ho is, Agej my Ago!" Wise woman, she had always kept one of her three wishes, so she changed her ape into a chameleon, she let him run all round her, she held him in her arms, she laughed and said: "Do yon-pee my Age.here, there, everywhere?."- Anil they said: "Age? But vmi—you have no