BEAUTIFUL WOMEN

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 54, Issue 3892, 21 April 1937, Page 9

BEAUTIFUL WOMEN

PHYSICAL CULTURE AS AN AID. Women and girls, particularly in the industrial areas, are to play an important part in the Government s £2,000,000 scheme for a fitter Bn - ain (says Margaret Lane). The scheme was made known in a Government White Paper recently, and already women’s organisations all over the country are discussing their plans for promoting the moveThe girls’ clubs, which have 400,000 members between the ages of 14 and 23, are particularly busy with ambitious suggestions, for it is almost entirely through these clubs that the “Keep Fit” movement is reaching and benefiting working girls and women in Britain. The history of the movement tor better health, ' (grace, and fitness among women in Britain is exactly seven years old, and began with a holiday visit which one of the girls club organisers paid to Sweden. There she saw women and girls of all classes and occupations using thenleisure to improve their health and beauty by games, dancing, exercises, and a scientific system of gymnastics. She introduced the Swedish women’s methods into her own girls’ club in Sunderland, and from that place the enthusiasm spread all over the country. . Said Miss O. V. Worsfold, physical training organiser of the National Council of Girls Clubs: “We have had astonishing results in the last few years, particularly in the industrial and special areas, where you might think girls would be too tired or too despondent to care about phy-

sicl training. “ Well, at first they are. Then they find that learning to dance, to have poise and grace and rhythm, acts as a mental as well as a physicl stimulus, and gives them fresh interest in their work and fresh determination to get out of their difficulties.

“ They become keen, too, because their vanity is interested. They find out that if they are healthy, alert, and well poised they carry their clothes twice as well, become twice as attractive.

“ All a club needs to make an unimaginable difference in the life and health of its members is a big bare room, a good instructor, and a piano —not very ambitious requirements, are they ? But many clubs in the poorer districts have not been able to afford these.

Th cinema and the spread of beauty culture, too, have whetted the working girls appetitte for beauty and health.

“ They see those lovely creatures on the screen, said Miss Worsfold, “ and want to look as beautiful. They can afford a little powder and lipstick, and can save up for a permanent wave; but they soon find that these things alone do not make attractive well-poised women. So they join in the physical culture imparted by the girls clubs, and improve themselves out of recogntion.