WHAT WOMEN EAT.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 6, 6 February 1892, Page 130

WHAT WOMEN EAT.

Mrs Henry Fawcett has asserted that women would never be able to emancipate themselves so long as they were content with a meal composed of buns and tea. Whatever may be meant by the ‘ emancipation of women,’ and whether the majority of the sex yearns for ‘ emancipation ’ or not, there is a distinct want of character and dignity about a lot of women seated at marble tables, munching dyspepsia-provoking plum cake, and sipping equally unwholesome, and more unpalatable tea from thick, white bowls, facetiously termed ‘teacups.’ The bread-and-butter shop is to the woman what the wine-bar is to the man, though not so much so. ‘ Another cup of tea, please, and a buttered scone,’ says she, ‘ Just one more brandy and soda and a cigar,’ says he; and they both wonder why dyspepsia is so prevalent. Such forms of feminine dissipation as I have described are, I admit, excusable, if not actually necessary, in the afternoon, provided the cake and the tea are wholesome concoctions. It is no good crusading against a custom that is as national as that of taking baths or playing tennis or cricket. But what I do vehemently protest against is the humiliating spectacle of women and girls who could afford to do better, lunching, or even dining off tea and cake, with an ancient egg, or a wad of hard ham or tinned tongue, as a piece de resistance. In these days when women have to act and think for themselves, and often for their husbands and brothers, they must fortify their constitutions; and generally those who take mid-day meals of such an unsubstantial order are bread-winners, or, at any rate, busy women. It is not necessary that a woman should eat a big rump steak, and drink a bottle of claret or a tankard of ale, in the middle of the day ; but it is desirable, in the interests of her health and of her womanhood, that she should cultivate a mens Sana in corpore sano. Moreover, there is such a want of ambition about the bun and about drinking thick and flavourless tea, or so-called coffee, that might just as well be sold as cocoa or pea-soup, or anything else. In the well-to-do class that does not patronise the bread-and-butter bear-garden, the same indifference to the quality and quantity of food often prevails. When the husband has been dining at his club, I hear the wife priding herself on the senmpy meal she has had. Contrast the dinner of the averagely well-to-do maiden lady and that of the equivalent bachelor.