BEAUTY STANDARDISED

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6884, 13 April 1929, Page 13

BEAUTY STANDARDISED

Parisian styles of clothing and the universal vogue of hairdressing and the use of cosmetics and facial creams have succeeded in standardising European beauty. That was clear eonugh when the “Beauty Queens” representing seventeen European countries assembled in Paris recently for the selection of Miss Europe.

There was much beauty"assembled by the contestants, but almost nothing in silhouettes and features which could be regarded as distinctly national. . So far as the observers were concerned, the' girls might have been pupils of a fashionable boarding school in any one of their seventeen nations and the judges themselves, who were chosen from the same nations, were obliged to admit that they had difficulty in detecting anything in the contestants’ appearance that might reveal their place of origin.

Talcum powder, tube dresses, bob-bed-hair and French heels effectively concealed the effects of climatic conditions, national customs and even peculiarities of skin complexion which might have been expected in such a contest. ■ The candidates, too, seem to have been chosen without the slightest regard for national reputations. “Miss France” was a rather large framed and featured blonde. “Miss Germany" though blonde was slim and delicately proportioned and gave a musical performance, singing in perfect French. It took very close inspection of “Miss Italy” to discover a faint intimation of olive skin, “Miss/Russia” was very French, and any one of the others could easily have passed for a French, English or American beauty. In general, the candidates demonstrated that the classic lines of beauty have been entirely forsaken, and that the modern eye demands slimness and petiteness above everything else. It is certain that the Venus de Milo, with her ample stature and flowing lines sheathed in a tube dress, would not have got a single vote from the jury. There was only one contestant with long hair, “Miss Switzerland,” who wore braided pigtails in the former fashion of Mary Pickford. All the rest were bobbed, though in varying styles of coiffure. The judgment of those who witnessed the contest was that in beauty, as in economic matters America henceforth must be prepared for competition from a European cartel organised for the contest upon fixed standards of production. “Miss Hungary,” selected as “Miss Europe,” presents nothing of Magyar traits, but rather represents an amalgamation of all that the Continent regards as lovely.