DE MILO OR DIANA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18963, 10 March 1925, Page 13

DE MILO OR DIANA.

Thin women are fads, fat women are freaks. The one may serve her purpose in the ballroom, the other in the sideshow of a circus, but only the happy medium, well-proportioned in all respects, can exemplify the fundamental beauty of womanhood. This has always been, so, and will be, world without end, in spite of fashions and modes, according to Dr. Jacques Bretmann, the celebrated beauty specialist of Paris, who condemns both the Paris couturieres for their straightline suits, and Berlin savants for their claim that the fleshy woman is coming into popularity again. Where real beauty is concerned, the margin is narrowly defined, the British United Press Paris correspondent, quotes Dr. Bretmann as saying. The Latin ideal is Venus de Milo, the Anglo-Saxon ideal is personified by Diana of tho Chase. Any lino extreme from these, one way or the other, is ugliness, insists this recognised authority on physical perfection. The learned doctor was drawn from his fashionable women clients in his clinic on the Rue de Rivoli by an article expressing the views of German doctors, artists and professors, which extolled the beauties of fat. women.

The. doctor said that dressmakers have been turning women's minds and making them twist their natural forms to fit, tho styles, but he thought this was a passing fancy. Ho regarded the intensive indulgence in sport as a menace to womanly beauty, particularly for the women of France, England and America. "The English have been the greatest, offenders in sport," lie .said; "the English woman is becoming flat-chested and stout-legged. The chief difference between the Latin and the Anglo-Saxon types lies ill the breadth of the chest and hips, the Latin type In ing somewhat, more developed. Golf'and tennis are all right, but football, hockey and running races are too strenuous for women. Thev are not built, to play men's games, and the nearer they approach to man's physical powers the more they destroy their womanlv attributes." Mr. Bretmann called the Venus de Milo a "beautiful girl." while the thin, flatchested dancing type now so common is only "a pretty girl." The fat, type is only ;i "gross creature." Frenchmen, he said, would continue to insist upon having their Venus dc Milo which, he in sisted. was ouite distinct from the accepted chic Parisicnne. and he believed the Anglo-Saxon would insist upon his Diana.