"THE AGE OF FAKE."

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19217, 5 January 1926, Page 10

"THE AGE OF FAKE."

EFFECT ON NATIONAL LIFE. DAME MELBA'S CRITICISM. LONDON, Dec. 27. Dame Nellie Melba, in an article in tho Weekly Dispatch, headed. "Tho Age of Fake and Make-believe," says:—"Recently I watched a woman who had stepped as far from nature as possible. She wore faked hair. Her face, on which many operations had been performed, was equally faked. Her skin, of which others were permitted to view the greater portion, was the product of massage, cold cream and powder. She continually gazed in a mirror, and dabbed her lips and pyes with cosmetics. She woro artificial flowers. "I thought, 'How deep should I have to cut through tho painted skin to find the real you, or have the yea.rs of makebelieve, in which you have chosen to be cheap and showy, instead of costly and chaste, withered your true instincts V "I do not condemn women for using lipsticks.. I use them myself sometimes. I am merely remarking how tho times liavo changed. Tho Victorian woman would have fainted with shame at the idea of publicly painting her lips. It was only before the war that we regarded the use of artificial jewels as outrageously •vulgar. Nevertheless, it. is now general. "I ask myself whether this universal worship of the false in material things is not affecting our whole mental and spiritual life. There is a complete lack of sincerity in modern conversation and behaviour. The age of fake has caused a decline in character and started a rot in many different strata of society. "There are moro faked marriages today than evor, in which the participants, lacking love, have hypocritically pretended the burning passion, resulting in thousands 6f divorces. I would prefer the French system, with the dowry, accompanied . by, almost brutal bargaining, to tho modern English hypocrisy. When I see these things, I begin to ask whether in this age of substitutes, we have found a substitute for love."