SPORTS GIRL’S RACES.

Waikato Times, Volume 100, Issue 16749, 16 March 1926, Page 6

SPORTS GIRL’S RACES.

PAINTER AND A HARD TYPE. ATHLETIC WOMEN’S CHILYiRKN. Tlie assertion by Dr. Leonard Williams that Hie playing by girls of games' originally invented for big boys and young men is producing a race of combative young giantesses and a creature who lias the male rather than Hie female characteristics, is strongly supported by Mr Alfred Praga, it.13.A., Hie portrait painter, and president ol ttie Society of Miniaturists, who slated recently: “Alt the modern games and amusements leave tlieir mark upon facial expression; so much so that I can tell whether a girl is a motorist, a sportswoman, or a dancer. “Girls of to-day arc, in fact, developing the motoring- face, the dancing face, and the . sports face. "The effect of this over-indulgence in sports creates a bard type of far* that no amount of use of the lip-stick or other aids to complexion will overcome. “Among the hundreds of girls I see every year J very rarely come across one with a fresii, youthful face. When I do its possessor is generally a young girl just from school who tuts not participated in these strenuous sports.” Weakly Sons. Miss Charlotte Cowdroy, headmistress of Grouch End High School and College, N., England, and a member of the Joint Committee on Ihc Physical Education of Girls, said: “1 have always maintained that the piaying of strenuous games by girls in tlieir ‘teens’ tends to make them hard and masculine, bolli physically and mentally. “I have found again and again that women who develop masculine characteristics, if they have children, have hoys who are generally weakly, and that it is Hie small, delicate, feminine woman who passes on the strength that she Inis held in trust to her hoys, who are strong and manly.” Mrs Elliott Lynn, vice-president of the Women’s Amateur Athletic Association, said:

"If the girl who is tall and strongly built, and lias a masculine hind of inind, spends her life in crochet work and cooking, it will not alter her figure or her point of view; but if her natural inclination be allowed some outlet in sports she will be a far better and a finer individual than if these natural instincts were suppressed or