FASHION IN DEFORMITY.

Western Star, Issue 377, 4 September 1880, Page 1 (Supplement)

FASHION IN DEFORMITY.

Professor a very interesting lecture at the Royal Institution, before a -crowded audience, on: "Fashion in Deformity." ' He passed in review the various methods- adopted by j : different nations and at different j ages Of j deforming or altering the natural form of j some portion of the body, in obedience to the | I dictates of fashion. The various practices of j ; shaving, cutting; and dressing the' hair and, beard; and tattooing the skin,. were alluded! : to by him; but more attention was given to j . the disfigurement of the HOse; lips, ahd by cutting holes- ■ and inserting Various' substances through them—almosti identical : customs being described among people living in most remote regions of the world." The 'fantastic methods of filing and clipping the ! front'teeth into'different-patterns, practised j j by ithe Malays and some African -Negroes, I were-then noticed; ' An adeountof the mode of altering the form o£ the head, whibh -pre>i vailed once extensively in Europe, ahd was almost universally adopted in ! Peru and on the western coast I of North • America; was followed : by a description of the effects produced upon the feet of : civilised races by the unnatural .form of the boots commonly worn, the evils of pointed toes and high heels being exemplified by -diagrams ' and specimens. ;The construction, of the waist was next noticed, the figure of the Venus of Milo and ■ one taken from the last Paris fasMon-b'bok I being I compared and .contrasted. All > these customs were shown to arise from a similar which manifested itself in' the j human mind under all conditions of civilisa> I tion, to tamper with a form which good sense I as well as good taste ought to teach was the most perfect that could be designed. !The'origin of these fashions .was mostly lost 'in obscurity, all attemps to solve them being little more than guesses.. Some i of thein have become associated .with superstitious observances, and have been spread and thought to be. hygienic;' most have some irelatioa to conventional standards of- im-; jproved personal appearance; but whatever their orgin, the desire to conform to common usage, and not to appear singular,.is the prevailing j motivei which leads to their continuance. The vitiation of taste produced "by these conventional standards, which shows itself in the. Malay in the preference of black: teeth to thoseof the most pearly whiteness ; in the Bougs, Negro, and American Bbto-:. eudds, in liking- lips and ears . which i :a»pi enormously and, to:our eyes,...hideously larged by huge wood plugs inserted through them; iu the Chinook Indian, by contempt of

any head which is riot flattened like a panpake Or elongated like a sugarloaf—is displaced aindbg. ourselves by the admiration of Unnatiirally pointed toes and contracted waists.— 'British Medical Journal,