THE BEAUTY CURVE

In a well-shaped waist, as in every other part of the body, the curved line of Beauty, with its delicate gradations, exercises a great charm. Examination of a Greek statue of the best period, male or female, or of the goddess of beauty in the Pagoda at Bangalur, India, shows a slight inward curve at the waist, whereas in early Greek and Egyptian art this curve is absent. The waist, therefore, like the feet and limbs, appears to have been gradually moulded into accordance with the line of Beauty—a notion which is also supported by the following remarks in Tylor’s Anthropology: “If fairly chosen photographs of Kaffirs be compared with a classic model such as the Apollo, it will be noticed that the trunk of the African has a somewhat wall-sided straightness, wanting in the inward slope which gives fineness to the waist, and in the expansion below, which gives breadth across the hips, these being two of the most noticeable points in the classic model which our painters recognise as an ideal of manly beauty.”

In woman, owing to the greater dimensions of her pelvis, this curvature is more pronounced than in man; yet even in woman it must be slight if the laws of Health and Beauty are to suffer no violation. “Moderation” is the one word which Mr. Buskin says he would have inscribed in golden letters over the door of every school of art. For “the least appearance of violence or extravagance, of the want of moderation and restraint, is,” as he remarks, “destructive of all beauty whatsoever in everything—colour, form, motion, language, or thought—giving rise to that which in colour we call glaring, in form inelegant, in motion ungraceful, in language coarse, in thought undisciplined, in all unchastened; which qualities are in everything most painful, because the signs of disobedient and irregular operation. And herein we at last find the reason of that which has been so often noted respecting the subtility and almost invisibility of natural curves and colours, and why it is that we look on those lines as least beautiful which fall into wide and far license of curvature, and as most beautiful which approach nearest (so that the curvilinear character be distinctly asserted) to the government of the right line, as in the pure and severe curves of the draperies of the religious painters,” etc.

THE WASP-WAIST MANIA

But Fashion, the handmaid of ugliness, too vulgar to appreciate the exquisite beauty of slight and subtle curvature, makes woman’s waist the most maltreated and deformed part of her body. There is not one woman in a hundred who does not deliberately destroy twenty per cent of her Personal Beauty by the way in which she reduces the natural dimensions of her waist. There is, indeed, ground to believe that the main reason why the bustle, and even the crinoline, are not looked on with abhorrence by all women is because they aid the corset in making the waist look smaller by contrast. The Wasp-waist Mania is therefore the disease which most imperatively calls for cure. But the task seems almost hopeless; for, as a female writer remarks, it is almost as difficult to cure a woman of the corset habit as a man of intemperance in drink.

“The injurious custom of tight lacing,” says PlanchÉ in his CyclopÆdia of Costumes, “‘a custom fertile in disease and death,’ appears to have been introduced by the Normans as early as the twelfth century; and the romances of the Middle Ages teem with allusions to and laudations of the wasplike waists of the dames and demoiselles of the period.... Chaucer, describing the carpenter’s wife, says her body was ‘gentyll and small as a weasel’; and the depraved taste extended to Scotland. Dunbar, in The Thistle and the Rose, describing some beautiful women, observes—

And to make their middles as small as possible has been ever since an unfortunate mania with the generality of the fair sex, to the detriment of their health and the distortion of their forms.”

Ever since 1602, when Felix Plater raised his voice against the corset, physicians have written against tight lacing. But not only has it been found impossible to cure this mania, even its causes have remained a mystery to the present day. Certainly no man can understand the problem. Is it simply the average woman’s lack of taste that urges her thus to mutilate her Personal Beauty? Is it the admiration of a few vulgar “mashers” and barber’s pets—since educated men detest wasp-waists? Or is it simply the proverbial feminine craze for emulating one another and arousing envy by excelling in some extravagance of dress, no matter at what cost? This last suggestion is probably the true solution of the problem. The only satisfaction a woman can get from having a wasp-waist is the envy of other silly women. What a glorious recompense for her Æsthetic suicide, her invalidism, and her humiliating confession that she considers the natural shape of God’s masterwork—the female body—inferior in beauty to the contours of the lowly wasp!

With this ignoble pleasure derived from the envy of silly women and the admiration of vulgar men, compare a few of the disadvantages resulting from tight lacing. They are of two kinds—hygienic and Æsthetic.

Hygienic Disadvantages.—Surely no woman can look without a shudder at a fashionable Parisian figure placed side by side with the Venus of Milo in Professor Flower’s Fashion in Deformity, in Mrs. Haweis’s Art of Beauty, or in Behnke and Brown’s Voice, Song, and Speech; or look without horror at the skeletons showing the excessive compression of the lower ribs brought about by fashionable lacing, and the injurious displacement, in consequence, of some of the most important vital organs. Nor can any young man who does not desire to marry a foredoomed invalid, and raise sickly children, fail to be cured for ever of his love for any wasp-waisted girl if he will take the trouble to read the account of the terrible female maladies resulting from lacing, given in Dr. Gaillard Thomas’s famous treatise on the Diseases of Women, in the chapter on “Improprieties in Dress.” To cite only one sentence: Women, he says, subject their waist to a “constriction which, in autopsy, will sometimes be found to have left the impress of the ribs upon the liver, producing depressions corresponding to them.”

Says Dr. J. J. Pope: “The German physiologist, SÖmmering, has enumerated no fewer than ninety-two diseases resulting from tight lacing.... ‘But I do not lace tightly,’ every lady is ready to answer. No woman ever did, if we accept her own statement. Yet stay. Why does your corset unclasp with a snap? And why do you involuntarily take a deep breath directly it is loosened?” Young ladies who imagine they do not wear too tight stays, inasmuch as they can still insert their hand, will find the fallacy and danger of this reasoning exposed in Mr. B. Roth’s Dress: its Sanitary Aspect.

The last line which I have italicised is of extreme significance. Perhaps the greatest of all evils resulting from tight lacing is that it discourages or prevents deep breathing, which is so absolutely essential to the maintenance of health and beauty. The “heaving bosom” of a maiden may be a fine poetic expression, but it indicates that the maiden wears stays and breathes at the wrong (upper) end of her lungs. “The fact of a patient breathing in this manner is noted by a physician as a grave symptom, because it indicates mischief of a vital nature in lungs, heart, or other important organ.” Healthy breathing should be chiefly costal or abdominal; but this is made impossible by the corset, which compresses the lower ribs, till, instead of being widely apart below, they meet in the middle, and thus prevent the lungs from expanding and receiving the normal share of oxygen, the only true elixir of life, youth, and beauty.

This wrong breathing, due to tight lacing, also causes “congestion of the vessels of the neck and throat ... gasping, jerking, and fatigue in inspiration, and unevenness, trembling, and undue vibration in the production and emission of vocal tone.”

Further, as the Lancet points out, “tight stays are a common cause of so-called ‘weak’ spine, due to weakness of muscles of the back.” Lacing prevents the abdominal muscles from exercising their natural functions—alternate relaxation and contraction: “A tight-laced pair of stays acts precisely as a splint to the trunk, and prevents or greatly impedes the action of the chief back muscles, which therefore become weakened. The unfortunate wearer feels her spine weaken, thinks she wants more support, so laces herself still tighter; she no doubt does get some support in this way, but at what a terrible cost!”

In regard to tight corsets, as another physician has aptly remarked, women are like the victims of the opium habit, who also daily feel the need of a larger dose of their stimulant, every increment of which adds a year to their age, and brings them a few steps nearer disease and ugly decrepitude.

Æsthetic Disadvantages.—Among the Æsthetic disadvantages resulting from the Wasp-waist Mania, the following may be mentioned, besides the loss of a clear, mellow, musical voice already referred to:—

(1) A stiff, inflexible waist, with a coarsely exaggerated contour, in place of the slight and subtle curvature so becoming to woman. In other words, a violation of the first law of personal Æsthetics—imposing the shape of a vulgar garment on the human form, instead of making the dress follow the outlines of the body.

(2) A sickly, sallow complexion, pale lips, a red nose, lack of buoyancy, general feebleness, lassitude, apathy, and stupidity, resulting from the fact that the compression of the waist induces an oxygen-famine. The eyes lose their sparkle and love-inspiring magic, the features are perceptibly distorted, the brow is prematurely wrinkled, and the expression and temper are soured by the constant discomfort that has to be silently endured.

(3) Ugly shoulders. A woman’s shoulders should be sloping and well rounded, like every other part of her body. Regarding the common feminine deformity of square shoulders, Drs. Brinton and Napheys remark, in their work on Personal Beauty, that “in four cases out of five it has been brought about by too close-fitting corsets, which press the shoulder-blades behind, and collar-bones in front, too far upwards, and thus ruin the appearance of the shoulders.”

(4) An ugly bust. Tight lacing “flattens and displaces the breasts.”

(5) Clumsiness. The corset is ruinous to grace. “Almost daily,” says Dr. Alice B. Stockham (Tokology), “women come to my office [in Chicago] burdened with bands and heavy clothing, every vital organ restricted by dress. It is not unusual to count from sixteen to eighteen thicknesses of cloth worn tightly about the pliable structure of the waist.” And Dr. Lennox Browne advances the following crushing argumentum ad feminam:—

“It is impossible for the stiffly-corseted girl to be other than inelegant and ungraceful in her movements. Her imprisoned waist, with its flabby muscles, has no chance of performing beautiful undulatory movements. In the ballroom the ungraceful motions of our stiff-figured ladies are bad enough; there is no possibility for poetry of motion; but nowhere is this more ludicrously and, to the thoughtful, painfully manifest than in the tennis court. Let any one watch the movements of ladies as compared with those of male players, and the absolute ugliness of the female figure, with its stiff, unyielding, deformed, round waist, will at once be seen. Ladies can only bend the body from the hip-joint. All that wonderfully contrived set of hinges, with their connected muscles, in the elastic column of the spine, is unable to act from the shoulders downwards; and their figures remind one of the old-fashioned modern Dutch doll.”

CORPULENCE AND LEANNESS

Many women consider the corset necessary as a figure-improver, especially if they suffer from excessive fatness. They will be surprised to hear that the corset is one of the principal causes of their corpulence. Says Professor M. Williams: “There is one horror which no lady can bear to contemplate, viz. fat. What is fat? It is an accumulation of unburnt body-fuse. How can we get rid of it when accumulated in excess? Simply by burning it away—this burning being done by means of the oxygen inhaled by the lungs. If, as Mr. Lennox Browne has shown, a lady with normal lung capacity of 125 cubic inches, reduces this to 78 inches by means of her stays, and attains 118 inches all at once on leaving them off, it is certain that her prospects of becoming fat and flabby as she advances towards middle age are greatly increased by tight lacing, and the consequent suppression of natural respiration.”

Thus corpulence may be put down as a sixth—or rather seventh—Æsthetic disadvantage resulting from the use of corsets.

The reason why women, although inferior to men in muscular development, have softer and rounder forms, is because there is a greater natural tendency in women than in men towards the accumulation of fatty tissue under the skin. The least excess of this adipose tissue is, however, as fatal as emaciation to that admiration of Personal Beauty which constitutes the essence of Love. Leanness repels the Æsthetico-amorous sense because it obliterates the round contours of beauty, exposes the sinews and bones, and thus suggests old age and disease. Corpulence repels it because it destroys all delicacy of form, all grace of movement, and in its exaggerated forms may indeed be looked upon as a real disease imperatively calling for medical treatment; as Dr. Oscar Maas shows most clearly and concisely in his pamphlet on the “Schwenninger Cure,” which should be read by all who suffer from obesity.

Although the very “father of medicine,” Hippokrates, studied the subject of corpulence, and formulated rules for curing it, doctors still disagree regarding some of the details of its treatment. Some forbid all fatty food, others prescribe it in small quantities, and Dr. Ebstein specially recommends fat viands and sauces as preventives; but the preponderance of the best medical opinion is against him. Dr. Say recommends the drinking of very large quantities of tea, while Professor Oertel urges the diminution of fluids in the body, first by drinking little, and secondly by inducing copious perspiration, either artificially (by hot air and steam baths, etc.), or, what is much better, by brisk daily exercise. Dr. Schwenninger, who secured so much fame by reducing Bismarck’s weight about 40 pounds, forbids the taking of liquids during or within an hour or two of meal-time; in other words, he counsels his patients not to eat and drink at the same time.

On the two most important points all authorities are practically agreed. They are that the patient must avoid food which contains large quantities of starch and sugar (such as cake, pastry, potatoes, bread, pudding, honey, syrup, etc.); and secondly, that he must take as much exercise as possible in the open air, because during walking the bodily fat is consumed as fuel, to keep the machine going.

The notorious Mr. Banting, who reduced his weight in a year from 202 to 150 pounds, “lived on beef, mutton, fish, bacon, dry toast and biscuit, poultry, game, tea, coffee, claret, and sherry in small quantities, and a night-cap of gin, whisky, brandy, or wine. He abstained from the following articles: pork, veal, salmon, eels, herrings, sugar, milk, and all sorts of vegetables grown underground, and nearly all fatty and farinaceous substances. He daily drank 43 ounces of liquids. On this diet he kept himself for seven years at 150 pounds. He found, what other experience confirms, that sugar was the most powerful of all fatteners” (Dr. G. M. Beard, in Eating and Drinking, a most entertaining and useful little volume).

Lean persons wishing to increase their weight need only reverse the directions here given as regards the choice or avoidance of certain articles of food. Not so, however, with regard to exercise. If you wish to reduce your corpulence, take exercise; if you wish to increase your weight, again take exercise. The apparent paradox lurking in this rule is easily explained. If you are too fat and walk a great deal, you burn up the superfluous fat and lose weight. If you are too lean and walk a great deal you increase the bulk of your muscles, and thus gain weight. Moreover, you greatly stimulate your appetite, and become able to eat larger quantities of sweet and starchy food—more than enough to counteract the wear and tear caused by the exercise.

Muscle is the plastic material of beauty. Fat should only be present in sufficient quantity to prevent the irregular outlines of the muscles from being too conspicuously indicated, at the expense of rounded smoothness. What the ancient Greeks thought on this subject is vividly shown in the following remarks by Dr. Maas: “According to the unanimous testimony of Thukydides, Plato, Xenophon, the gymnastic exercises to which the Greeks were so passionately addicted, and which constituted, as is well known, a very essential part of the public education of the young, had for their avowed object the prevention of undue corpulence, since an excessive paunch did not only offend the highly-developed Æsthetic sense of this talented nation, but was justly regarded as an impediment to bodily activity. In order, therefore, to make the youths not only beautiful, but also vigorous and able to resist hardship, and thus more capable of serving their country, they were, from their childhood, and uninterruptedly, exercised daily in running, wrestling, throwing the discus, etc.; so that the prevention of corpulence was practically raised to a formal state-maxim, and as such enforced occasionally with unyielding persistence.”

The ruinous consequences of an exaggerated abdomen to the harmonious proportions of the body, and to grace of attitude and gait, are so universally known that it would be superfluous to apply any of our negative tests of Beauty—such as the facts that apes and savages are commonly characterised by protuberant bellies, and that intemperance and gluttony have the same disastrous effect on Personal Beauty. In civilised communities, indolence and beer-drinking are the chief causes predisposing to corpulence. In Bavaria, where enormous quantities of beer are consumed, almost all the men are deformed by obesity; but in other countries, as a rule, women suffer more from this anomaly than men, because they lead a less active life.

It may be stated as a general rule that girls under eighteen are too slight and women over thirty too heavy—"fat and forty." This calamity is commonly looked on as one of the inevitable dispensations of Providence, whereas it is simply a result of indolence and ignorance. With a little care in dieting, and two or three hours a day devoted to walking, rowing, tennis, swimming, dancing, etc., any young lady can add ten to fifteen pounds to her weight in one summer, or reduce it by that amount, as may be desired. But as the consumption of enormous quantities of fresh air by the unimprisoned lungs is the absolute condition of success in this beautifying process, it is useless to attempt it without laying aside the corset.

The plea that corsets are needed to hold up the heavy clothing is of no moment. Women, like men, should wear their clothing suspended from the shoulder, which is a great deal more conducive to health, comfort, and gracefulness than the clumsy fashion of attaching everything to the waist.

Still less weight can be attached to the monstrous argument that women need stays for support. What an insulting proposition to assert that civilised woman is so imperfectly constructed that she alone of all created beings needs artificial surgical support to keep her body in position! If there are any women so very corpulent or so very lean that they need a corset as a figure-improver or a support, then let them have it for heaven’s sake, and look upon themselves as subjects ripe for medical treatment. What is objected to here is that strong, healthy, well-shaped girls should deform themselves deliberately by wearing tight, unshapely corsets, rankly offensive to the Æsthetic sense.

Once more the question must be asked, “Why do women wear such hideous things as crinolines, bustles, and corsets, so universally abhorred by men?” Is it because they are inferior to men in Æsthetic taste? Is Schopenhauer right when he says that “women are and remain, on the whole, the most absolute and incurable Philistines?” They are deficient in objectivity, he adds: “hence they have no real intelligence or appreciation for music or poetry, or the plastic arts; and if they make any pretences of this sort, it is only apish affectation to gratify their vanity. Hence it would be more correct to call them the unÆsthetic than the beautiful sex.”

The pessimistic woman-hater no doubt exaggerates. Yet—without alluding to the paucity of women who have distinguished themselves in the fine arts—is it credible that the average woman would so readily submit to a repulsive fashion like the bustle, or a hat “adorned” with the corpse of a murdered bird, if she had even a trace of Æsthetic feeling? If women had the refined Æsthetic taste with which they are commonly credited, is it conceivable that they would voluntarily adopt the African bustle, because fashionable, in preference to a more becoming style? Have you ever heard that a person of acknowledged musical taste, for example, gave up his violin or piano to learn the African banjo, because that happened to be the fashionable instrument?

Yet there are, no doubt, many women whose eyes even custom cannot blind to the hideousness of most Parisian fashions. But they have not the courage to show their superior taste in their dresses, being overawed and paralysed in presence of a monstrous idol, the Fashion Fetish.

Never has a stone image, consecrated by cunning priests, exercised a more magic influence on a superstitious heathen’s mind than the invisible Fashion Fetish on the modern feminine intellect. It is both amusing and pathetic to hear a woman exclaim: “Our women are most blind and thoughtless followers of fashions still imposed upon them, Heaven knows wherefore and by whom” (Mrs. Haweis).

So great is the awe in which this Fetish is held that no one has yet dared to lay violent hands on it. Yet if we now knock it on the head, we shall find it hollow inside; and the fragments, subjected to chemical analysis, show that they consist of the following five elements:—

(1) Vulgar Display of Wealth.—A certain number of rich people, being unable to distinguish themselves from poorer mortals in any other way, make a parade of their money by constantly introducing changes in the fashion of their apparel which those who have less income are unable to adopt at once. This, and not the love of novelty, is the real cause of the minute variations in styles constantly introduced. Of course it is generally understood that to boast of your wealth is as vulgar as to boast of your wit or wisdom; but this makes no difference, for Fashion in its very essence is vulgar.

(2) Milliners’ Cunning.—Milliners grow fat on fashionable extravagance. Hence it is the one object of their life to encourage this extravagance. So they constantly invent new styles, to prevent women from wearing the same dress more than one season. And every customer is slyly flattered into the belief that nothing was ever so becoming to her as the latest style, though it probably makes her look like a fright. As a little flattery goes a great way with most women, the milliner’s hypocrisy escapes detection. “The persons who devise fashions are not artists in the best sense of the word, nor are they persons of culture or taste,” as Mr. E. L. Godkin remarks: “their business is not to provide beautiful costumes but new ones.”

It is to such scheming and unscrupulous artisans that women entrust the care of their personal appearance. And they will continue doing so until they are more generally taught the elements of the fine arts and a love of beauty in Nature.

To make sure of a rich harvest, milliners, when a new fashion has appeared, manufacture all their goods in that style, so that it is almost impossible to buy any others, all of which are declared “bad form.” And their poor victims meekly submit to this tyranny!

(3) Tyranny of the Ugly Majority.—This is another form of tyranny from which ladies suffer. Most women are ugly and ungraceful, and resent the contrast which beautiful women, naturally and becomingly attired, would present to their own persons: hence they favour the crinolette, the bustle, the corset, the long, trailing dresses, the sleeve-puffs at the shoulders, etc., because such fashionable devices make all women look equally ugly and ungraceful.

Mrs. Armytage throws light on the origin of some absurd fashions when she refers to the cases of “the patches first applied to hide an ugly wen: of cushions carried to equalise strangely-deformed hips; of long skirts to cover ugly feet; and long shoes to hide an excrescence on the toe.”

Surely it is sufficient to expose the origin of such fashions to make sensible women turn away from them in disgust. There are indeed indications that the handsome women have at last begun to find out the trick which the ugly majority have been playing on them; and many are now dressing in such a way as to show their personal beauty to advantage, undaunted by the fact that ugly women pretend to be shocked at short dresses which allow a pretty ankle to be seen, and jerseys which reveal the outlines of a beautiful bust and waist.

(4) Cowardice.—Many women adopt a fashion which they dislike simply because they do not dare to face the remark of a rival that they are not in fashion. As one of them frankly confesses: “We women dress not to be simple, genuine, and harmonious, or even to please you men, but to brave each other’s criticism.” A noble motive, truly!

One is often tempted to doubt the old saying that the first desire of women is to be considered beautiful, on observing how ready they are to sacrifice fifty per cent or more of their beauty for the sake of being in fashion. Last summer, for instance, the edict seems to have gone forth that the hair was no longer to be allowed to form a graceful fringe over the forehead, but was to be combed back tightly. So back it was combed, and beautiful faces became rarer than ever. Leigh Hunt had written in vain that the hair should be brought over large bare foreheads “as vines are trailed over a wall.” ThÉophile Gautier, “the most perfect poet in respect of poetical form that France has ever produced” (Saintsbury), agreed with Schopenhauer regarding woman’s Æsthetic sense: “Women,” he says, “have only the sense of fashion and not that of beauty. A woman will always find beautiful the most abominable fashion if it is the genre suprÊme to wear that style.” He commends the women of Granada for their good taste in preferring their lovely mantillas to the hideous French hats, and hopes Spain may never be invaded by French fashions and milliners.

(5) Sheepishness.—It may seem ungallant to apply this term to the conduct of a woman who imitates the habits of a sheep; but, after all, which is the more gallant action: to applaud a woman’s self-chosen ugliness, or, at least, to ignore it for fear of offending her; or, on the other hand, to restore her beauty by boldly holding up the mirror and allowing her to see herself as others see her? It is the nature of a flock of sheep to jump into the sea without a moment’s hesitation if their leader does so. It is the nature of fashionable women to commit Æsthetic suicide if their leader sets the example. Where is the difference?

It is surprising that Darwin did not refer to Fashion as furnishing a most convincing proof of his theory that men are descended from apelike ancestors. One of the ape’s most conspicuous traits is imitativeness—blind, silly, slavish imitation: hence the verb “to ape.” Blind, silly, slavish imitation is also the essence of Fashion. Imitativeness implies a low order of mind, a lack of originality. The more a man is intellectually removed from the ape, the less is he inclined to imitate blindly. Men of genius are a law unto themselves, while inferior minds can only re-echo or plagiarise. Just so the prevalent anxiety to be in fashion is a tacit confession of mental inferiority, of insufficient independence of taste and originality to choose a style suited to one’s individual requirements.

INDIVIDUALISM VERSUS FASHION

Fashion is a deadly enemy of Romantic Love, not only because it makes women sacrifice their Beauty to unhealthful garments and habits, but because it obliterates individuality, on which the ardour of Love depends. “Why don’t girls marry?” asks Mrs. Haweis. “Because the press is great, and girls are undistinguishable in the crowd. The distinguishable ones marry—those who are beautiful or magnetic in some way, whose characters have some definite colouring, and who can make their individuality felt. I would have said—who can make themselves in any way conspicuous, but that the word has been too long associated with an undesirable prominence. Yet after all, prominence is the thing needed—prominence of character, or individuality. Men, so to speak, pitch upon the girls they can see: those who are completely negative, unnoticeable, colourless, formless, invisible, are left behind.”

Women, in their eagerness to sacrifice their individuality to Fashion, forget that fashion leaders are never in fashion, i.e. that they always adopt a new style as soon as the crowd has aped them: wherefore it is doubly silly to join the apes.

Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt never allows a corset to deform her figure and mar her movements: and who has not had occasion to admire the inimitable grace of this actress? But how many women have the courage thus to sacrifice Fashion to Grace and Beauty?

Yet, notwithstanding the continuance of the corset and the bustle mania and Parisian hats, it may be asserted that women are just at present more sensibly dressed than they have been for some generations, and there is some disposition to listen to the artistic and hygienic advice of reformers. Unfortunately, the history of Fashion does not tend to confirm any optimistic hopes that may be based on this fact. There have been periods heretofore when women became comparatively sensible, only to relapse again into utter barbarism. Thus we read that “after the straight gown came the fardingale, which in turn developed into the hoop with its concomitants of patches, paint, and high-heeled shoes.” Then came the reaction: “Short waists and limp, clinging draperies came in to expose every contour; stays and corsets were for a time discredited, only to be reintroduced, and with them the whole cycle of fashions which had once already had their day.”

Experience shows that argumentation, ridicule, malicious or good-natured, and satire, are equally powerless against Fashion. Progress can only be hoped for in two ways—by instructing women in the elementary laws of beauty in nature and mankind, and by destroying the superstitious halo around the word Fashion. It has just been shown that a disposition to imitate a fashion set by others is always a sign of inferior intellect and rudimentary taste; and the time no doubt will come when this fact will be generally recognised, and when it will be considered anything but a compliment to have it said that one follows the flock of fashionable imitators.

The progress of democratic institutions and sentiments will aid in emancipating women from the slavery of Fashion. Empresses who can set the fashion for two continents are becoming scarce; and the woman of the future will no doubt open her eyes wide in astonishment on reading that in the nineteenth century most women allowed some mysterious personage to prescribe what they should wear. “Can it be possible,” she will exclaim, "that my poor dear grandmothers did not know that what is food for one person is poison for another, and that any fashion universally followed means Æsthetic suicide for nine-tenths of the women who adopt it? I am my own fashion-leader, and wear only what is becoming to my individual style of beauty. What a preposterous notion to proclaim that any particular colour or cut is to be exclusively fashionable this year for all women, for blondes and brunettes, for the tall and the short, the stout and the slim alike! What could have induced those women thus to annihilate their own beauty deliberately? And not only their beauty, but their comfort as well. For I see that in New York, Fashion used to decree that women must exchange their light, comfortable summer clothes for heavier autumn fabrics exactly in the middle of September, although the last two weeks of September are often the hottest part of the year. And the women, almost without exception, obeyed this decree!

“And then those long trailing dresses! How they must have added to their ease and grace of movement in the ballroom, tucked up clumsily or held in the hand! And it seems that these trails were even worn in the dirty streets, for I see that at one time the Dresden authorities forbade women to sweep the streets with their dresses; and in one of Mr. Ruskin’s works I find this advice to girls: ‘Your walking dress must never touch the ground at all. I have lost much of the faith I once had in the common sense, and even in the personal delicacy, of the present race of average English women, by seeing how they will allow their dresses to sweep the streets if it is the fashion to be scavengers.’”

MASCULINE FASHIONS

In his emancipation from Fashion man has made much more progress than woman. There is still a considerable number of shallow-brained young “society men” who naÏvely and minutely accept the slight variations introduced every year in the cut and style of cravats, shirts, and evening-dress by cunning tailors, in order to compel men to throw away last season’s suits and order new ones. But much larger is the number of men who disregard such innovations, and laugh at the silly persons who meekly accept them, even when their taste is offended by such new fashions as the hideous collars and hats with which the market is occasionally flooded.

There was a time when men spent as much time and money on dress in a week as they now do in a year; a time when men were as strictly ruled by capricious, cunning Fashion as women are to-day. Lord March, we read, “laid a wager that he would make fashionable the most humiliating dress he could think of. Accordingly, he wore a blue coat with crimson collar and cuffs—a livery, and not a tasteful livery—but he won his bet.” After the battle of Agincourt, it is said, “the Duc de Bourbon, in order to ransom King John, sold his overcoat to a London Jew, who gave no more than its value, we may be pretty sure, but nevertheless gave 5200 crowns of gold for it. It seems to have been a mass of the most precious gems.” The Duke of Buckingham “had twenty-seven suits of clothes made, the richest that embroidery, lace, silk, velvet, silver, gold, and gems could contribute; one of which was a white uncut velvet, set all over, both suit and cloak, with diamonds valued at fourscore thousand pounds, besides a great feather stuck all over with diamonds, as were also his sword, girdle, hat, and spurs.”

Mr. Spencer cites two amusing instances of masculine subjection to fashion in Africa and mediÆval Europe. Among the Darfurs in Africa, “If the sultan, being on horseback, happens to fall off, all his followers must fall off likewise; and should any one omit this formality, however great he may be, he is laid down and beaten.” “In 1461, Duke Philip of Burgundy, having had his hair cut during an illness, issued an edict that all the nobles of his states should be shorn also. More than five hundred persons sacrificed their hair.”

So far as men are still subject to the influence of ugly fashions, they differ from women in at least frankly acknowledging the ugliness of these fashions. Whereas most women admire, or pretend to admire, corsets, high-heeled boots, crinolettes, bustles, etc., there are few men who do not detest e.g. the unshapely, baggy trousers, which were so greatly abhorred by the Æsthetic sense of the ancient Greeks; and most men to-day (except those who have ugly legs) would gladly wear knee-breeches, if they could do so without making themselves too conspicuous. Herein lies the greatest impediment to dress reform. To make oneself very conspicuous is justly considered a breach of good manners; and few have the courage, like Mr. Oscar Wilde, to make martyrs and butts of ridicule of themselves.

But if individuals are comparatively powerless, clubs of acknowledged standing might make themselves very useful to the cause of Personal Beauty, as affected by dress, if they would vote to adopt in a body certain reforms as regards trousers, hats, and evening-dress. Then it would no longer be said of a man rationally dressed that he is eccentric, but that he belongs to the X—— Club; and many outsiders would immediately follow suit for the coveted distinction of being taken for members of that club. Thus both the wise and the foolish would be gratified.

As showing how invariably and consistently Fashion is the handmaid of ugliness, it is curious to note that the several styles of dress worn by men are fashionable in proportion to their ugliness. For the greatest occasions the swallow-tail or evening-dress is prescribed. Next in rank is the ugly frock-coat, for morning calls. Of late, it is true, the more becoming “cut-away” has been tolerated in place of the frock-coat; but the sack-coat, which alone follows the natural outlines of the body, and neither has a caudal appendage, like the evening-dress, nor, like the frock-coat, gives the impression that a man’s waist extends down to his knees, is altogether tabooed at social gatherings, except those of the most informal kind.

Man’s evening-dress is so uniquely unÆsthetic and ugly that fashionable women have of course long been eyeing it with envy and have gradually adopted some of its features. One of these is the chimney-pot hat, the cause of so much premature baldness and discomfort. But women are not quite so foolish as men in this matter; for they do not wear tall hats at evening-parties and the opera, but only when out riding, where the necessity of dodging about to keep them on against the force of the wind and the blows of overhanging boughs, compels them to go through all sorts of grotesque gymnastics with neck and head. If they wore a more rational and becoming head-dress on horseback they might easily look pretty and graceful, which would be fatal to their chances of being considered fashionable.fashionable.

In comparing masculine and feminine fashions, we must note that trousers and swallow-tailed coats, though ugly, are harmless; while high-heeled shoes, corsets, chignons, etc., are as fatal to health as to Personal Beauty.

It is sometimes claimed in behalf of Fashion that, though it often favours ugliness, it establishes a rule and model for all; whereas, if everything were left to individual taste, the result might be still more disastrous. Nonsense. Rare as good taste is among women, a modicum is commonly present; and there are extremely few who, if not overawed by the Fashion Fetish, would ever invent or adopt such hideous irrepressible monstrosities as bustles, crinolines, chignons, trailing dresses, Chinese boots, bird-corpse hats, etc.

A protest must, finally, be made against the horrible figures which in our fashion papers are constantly offered as models of style and appearance. Even in the best of them, such as Harper’s Bazar, which frequently points out the injuriousness of tight lacing, female figures are printed every week with hideously narrow waists, such as no woman could possibly possess unless she were in the last stages of consumption, or some other wasting disease.