STREAMLINED FIGURES

Southland Times, Issue 23380, 11 December 1937, Page 16

STREAMLINED FIGURES

Limbering Exercise

(By

DONALD LOOMIS)

If you have time for just one exercise some morning, I’d advise you to try this one which helps keep you flexible, limber and graceful; it stretches the back muscles and takes the fat off hips and thighs as well. As you will see from the picture, posed by Jean Chatburn, you stand with feet well apart, arms folded and knees stiff. Bend forward, and as you go down keep twisting your body from side to side as you work yourself lower; then twist again as you work up. Be sure you feel every muscle in the back getting stretched, also feel the pull in the hips and thighs. Girls who work in pictures must keep their weight six to eight pounds less than would, be considered correct for the average girl. Because they cannot put on the extra pounds, picture girls are nearly always hungry and would eat like wolves if given the chance. If you are overweight and want to lose a few pounds, try following the advice I give these girls. I tell them to drink a glass of orange juice when they feel desperately hungry, or to eat an apple, a slice of pineapple, several stalks of celery or a head of lettuce with the juice of a lemon squeezed over it. When a girl acquires the habit of eating a great deal of food, it is difficult for her to give it up. Luise Rainer came from Vienna, Austria, where the ideal girl is much plumper than is considered beautiful over here. She was twenty pounds overweight according to our standards, although at her home she was thought slender. At first she could not understand why she was

asked to lose weight, as she believed it would make her face haggard and she would lose her pretty curves, but after she had observed our American stars on and off the screen she began to understand, and she worked hard to get rid of the excess poundage. As a rule, though, overweight girls haven’t the will power of thin girls, for they are likely to be complacent, content or lackadaisical. The thin girl runs instead of walking, is energetic and ambitious, and easy to work with because she wants to succeed. The fat girl, on the other hand, listens to me and does as she pleases. “I’d like to be thin, of course,” she will say, “but I’d much rather eat!” _ Unless she is scared into dieting and doing her exercises by a threat of losing her contract, she is always cheating—taking a piece of pastry or ice cream for dessert—and forgetting to do her exercises. Did you ever try sky-walking? Here it is, a good thing for that extra-tire-look at the waistline:

Lie on your back on the floor. Raise both legs as high as you can, arms outstretched at the sides. Now rotate your legs forward and backward alternately, as though you were walking on a globe hung in the sky. You can’t do much of this at first, so do it with discretion.