Re Rouge

Southland Times, Issue 22218, 10 January 1934, Page 3

Re Rouge

Do you know that once upon a time it was a sin to rouge? It sounds unbelievable in these days when rouging is such a natural thing. These days doctors stress the value of feeling well, and with this in view, the wisdom of making the best of one’s self in dress matters and general grooming comes uppermost. A Sydney doctor thinks that the use of rouge by a woman who, through ill-health or possibly natural lack of colour, has that facial expression of grey weariness, is a brighten-ing-up medium for eyes and cheeks which inspire a sense of greater confidence and helps very much to restore that well feeling. But there was not always this tolerance of make-up. This amusing early Victorian reticence in regard to paint, powder- and sartorial fallals was largely inspired by the fact that, about the end of the 18th Century, when cosmetics were so generally in use among all classes of women, the following quaintest of Parliamentary Acts was passed:

“That all women of whatever age, rank, profession or degree, whether virgin maid ox- widow, that shall from and after such Act impose upon, seduce and betray into matrimony any of his Majesty’s subjects by means of scent, paints, cosmetic washes, artificial teeth, false hair, Spanish wool, iron stays, hoops, high-heeled shoes or bolstered hips, shall incur- the penalty of the law now in force against witchcraft and like misdemeanors, and that the marriage upon conviction shall stand null and void.”

Of the wickedness of using Spanish wool, iron stays, hoops and bolstered hips, modern women surely may be acquitted, but on all others counts obviously we should be condemned, and the xnarried among us immediately unmarried, and convicted as witches.

In those sad days, apparently his Majesty’s subjects were mortally afraid of woman’s wily arts and ten.’tied of matrimonial traps.