WHY DO WOMEN PAINT?

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19140, 5 October 1925, Page 13

WHY DO WOMEN PAINT?

Why do women paint their faces? Obviously because they suppose it improves their looks. And, generally, they are right. Just as most men are born with an ingrained love of gambling—the idea of getting something for nothing—so most women are born with a love of beautifying their bodies for the delectation of man. That it is done with the ultimate —though not always completely conscious—desire to attract men is probably true; and yet there are plenty of men who say they hate it. But Ido not think they can always detect it, do you t Moralists in all ages have condemned the use of rouge as a sign of wantonness in the individual and decadence M the race, writes Lady Norah Bentinck., But, as it is practically impossible to find an age when women did not, paint, one is constrained to ask when were the good old days ? In the 14th century the Florentine women had the reputation of "the best-painted women in the world," and' all women were described by a chronicler of that day as "always vain and light, so that if yon have them in the house never take your eyes off them, but watch them and make them fear you." Of a widow named Perette in the year 1300 it is told that after her husband had been dead but three days she was in pursuit of another one with "silk dresses, false hair and rouge." The hussy! Although one woiald have- thought most of them were by this time inoculated against the evil effects of colour poisoning, there are still men extant who object to the idea of bestowing greetings of an amorous nature upon rouged lips, saying that they do not want to get ptomaine poisoning. But on the whole I should say that men cannot really object to it. considering the numbers of women who adopt the fashion. Or do men merely put up with what they can neither end nor mend! Maybe Miss 1945 will hare swung back "to being a maid of dimity and white mus tin, as demure and untainted as her great-grandmother; a thing of "prunes and prisms" rather than of fags and cocktails. But stalk if a tonch of" a geranium leaf under each eye will lift a maid from plainness to prettiness, there is surely no law, either Divine or man-made, to prevent her applying that rosy petal]