A PERFECT FIGURE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7506, 13 September 1902, Page 3

A PERFECT FIGURE.

The Physical Education ef 'Women. Answering the objection to the physical education of women, Mr Eugene Sandow observes that common-sense and common experience will teach that, when a woman becomes healthier and stronger, she does not become less of a woman, . but a more perfect woman. It is not the feminine weakling that is the Greek ideal, nor the peevish, irritable, self-centred woman who is 'a burden to her friends and a gold-mine to her doctor. The perfect woman, is rather the possessor of a perfect physique and absolute health, ready and fit to fulfil her womanhood. "Let it be understood, once and for all, that men and women develop, and should develop, along wholly different lines. When a woman develops she does not become a man; she does not approximate any nearer to the manly physique or to the masculine temperament. She simply becomes a more perfect woman. Woman is not the inferior of man, so that, when she develops, she tends to come up to his level ; fhe the complement of man, having a right at least equal to his ovm. This applies not only to the the mental temperament, but also to the physical. The muscles in women are quite different from masculine muscles ; they are longer, and tend to develop, not in short abrupt masses, but in beautiful rounded lines of firmly-built healthy tissues. Even in the case of the professional 'strong woman,' whose one occupation is to lift heavy weights, the muscles never develop as they would in a man. If a woman's muscles are under-de-veloped it is easy to bring them up to the normal— it is almost impossible to bring them past that normal."