MODERN WOMEN AND FASHIONABLE FIGURES

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 3, Issue 12, 1 June 1925, Page 72

MODERN WOMEN AND FASHIONABLE FIGURES

HOW TO BE SLIM WITHOUT BEING UNHEALTHY

FEW years ago a famous Belgian prisoner—a man of intelligence and education —was met by a reporter on the day of his release, taken for a drive through the streets of Brussels, and asked what changes in their appearance specially impressed him. What struck him most, he replied, was a noticeable modification in the figures of women. “I find them,” he said, “strangely elongated. When I last saw them they were all short and dumpy.” A clear proof that woman, “various and mutable,” according to the Latin poet, is mutable in more respects than one. The difference between men and women in this matter is, no doubt, one of degree rather than kind; but it is nevertheless considerable. His physical structure also undergoes some modification from age to age; but it does not alter perceptibly from season to season. Nor do its changes seem to depend upon volition or the conscious imitation of a fashionable model. The John Bull figure has, indeed, disappeared; but its disappearance was not due to any sudden whim or authoritative decree. What happened was that man gradually ceased to develop on the John Bull lines, as the result, or, some would say, the reward, of adopting a new way of life—living more in the town and less in the country, drinking less beer, eating less fattening food and taking more exercise. Thus, in the course of a century or so, a new physical type was slowly evolved; and no signs of any reaction towards the previous type are anywhere discernible.

Diet and Exercise 'W/’OMAN’S physical transformations are far more radical and rapid. Indeed, it is not merely the prevalent type of figure, but the actual figure of the individual woman which appears to vary, not, indeed, from day to day, but certainly from year to year, with the result that the Press has lately been full of protests against the violent means by which these ends of fashion are attained. II font souffrir pour etre belle: now, as of old, that seems to be the guiding motto. Just as the wasp waist was produced by the old-fash-ioned corset, so the slim figures which we nowadays see everywhere are being artificially created by similar coercion and compression. It seems a pity, even to those who regard the slim figures as the more elegant; and another citation from another Latin poet may partially explain why one views the practice with regret and apprehension. “Nature,” he says, “though expelled with a pitchfork, nevertheless comes back and reasserts herself”; and it may well be that, in this case also, a sharp reaction may follow. Those, that is to say, who seek to reduce their too, too solid flesh by squeezing it flat, may find that it is not, in the long run, quite as amenable to the pressure as they were led to suppose. Wise women will remember that the real secret of a permanently beautiful figure is not any kind of corset, but a healthy diet and suitable calisthenic exercise.