The Wanganui Chronicle SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1928. IS THE SLIM FIGURE GOING?'

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 71, Issue 219, 15 September 1928, Page 6

The Wanganui Chronicle SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1928. IS THE SLIM FIGURE GOING?'

IMO sooner does fashion seem set in one direction than it swings violently towards the other. For this, tailors, costumieies, milliners and shoemakers, shop-assistants and mannequins have much to be thankful for. Fashion is largely their breadwinner. But when fashion takes hold of human beings, and bids them change their shape—well fashion is an impertinent dame.

Yet fashion “gets away with it,” as our American friends would say; to describe women as “slaves of fashion” is no great exaggeration; and they must needs be almost as sprightly as the ladies of the ballet, so quick are the changes demanded by sartorial caprice. That frock, worn but once, is now wrong in design; that last week’s hat is an “outrage”; those shoes—- “ Give them to the maid.” It is more than probable the maid would scorn them! All this is bad enough—or good enough, if you are a tailor, a costumiere, a milliner or a shoemaker, or one of those whose livelihood depends upon the activities of the indispensablcs mentioned—but is there to be no resistance to the rule of the Dame when she tyrannously bids your wife or sister to become lean or become fat as the fancy seizes her? Is man to raise no hand or voice on behalf of the weaker sex in rebellion against these apparently unreasonable dictates of an eternally troublesome shrew? Out then upon him for a ninny! . ***** A cable message from London contains the latest dire enjoinder. Fattening exercises are “becoming the rage,” according to fashion dictators and restaurant proprietors. No longer do the girls ask for black coffee and lemon squashes, so that they may remain (or become) slim. They demand the decoctions known as sundaes, with eream chocolate and pastries. It is to be a world of flesh—if not of the devil! “Everybody knows that the fashion experts started the ball rolling when they decreed ample curves,” states the message, “but the food experts point out that hipless and chestless figures inside the new fashions can only produce frights. Without plumpness, the new frocks resemble washing hung out on a clothes line.” To-day’s fashions are to-morrow’s “frights.” What will become of all the accessories of slimness? No more weak tea with lemon; no more uncomfortable dieting; no more bending and turning exercises, long walks, or special baths for “reducing.” Cream and bananas—bananas and cream—viands of every kind, and plenty of them; good-bye tennis, good-bye, good-bye! • * ♦ • Fat is to take the place of sinew and muscle—fat! Instead of advertisements showing “How I took off 701bs weight in 7 weeks,” we shall read of “How I increased my weight by 701bs in 7 days.” For you can put it on much faster than you take it off, if you only eat enough, and keep still enough. That is, of course, unless you happen to be one of Pharaoh’s lean kine, for whom ’twill be a hopeless world with the influx of the new fashion. Thus are the rich made poor over night, so to speak. The Russian Revolution was in no part so cruel as some of the revolutions decreed by fashion.

It is stated that the doctors are “altruistically” supporting the new fashions, on the ground that self-starvation in the interests of boyish figures has been undermining the health of the rising generation. We shall see where the altruism comes in when over-eating and under-exercising doubles the number of patients who seek medical advice. But though Dame Fashion may insist, she cannot always enforce. Thank goodness there are figures that refuse to grow fat, and figures that refuse to grow thin!