Connecticut western news., 1873-06-20
The Dress of Women.
What a Lecturer Thinks on the Subie


 A lecture was lately delivered in Lon don on the inconvenience of modern dress-the dress of women being par. ticularly referred to. The lecturer said that of all the evils of latter day fash ions for females, none were so great as that one constructing the waist, and so altering the form of the human body. 1t might not seem to us so at casual glance, because the eye had become &C., crstomed to the deformity; but still it was not less hideous in point of taste than it was destructive to the health. He had measured the waists of women of 12 stones weight, and found their cir conference not to exceed eighteen inches thus compressing 8 waist which, at the most modern computation, should have been twenty-five inches, to half it's nat ural girth. The terrible pressure had, of course, the most detrimental effect upon the vital organs, by depressing and circumscribing, and, at times, re- versing the action of the heart and lungs, the liver and the stomach. The fact was that women had now become so obedient to the laws of fashion, and they laced themselves to such an extent, that they ceased to breathe through the imitation of the chest, but rather by the inelegant as we'll as unwholesome means of "pufing." Another dreadful evil of existing fashion was the deformity in- duced in the feet by the modern style of boot, and the worst of such defects were now at their worst. The lecturer here explained the action of the foot in walking, by which, mutually, the weight of the body was thrown upon the heel, the forepart of the foot being used as spring to impel the body forward. But the present fashion did not admit of the fulfllment of such natural laws. It did not even allow the great toe to remain straight, but forced it outward, so that all the toes were crushed up into bunch. Naturally, the result of such harvesting was fiourishing and ever increasing crop of corns and bunions. We wonder, however, where the lecturer got his authority for the following lu- dicrous statement: "During the late American war, an army of corn-cutters was obliged to accompany the Army of the Potomac, to cut the corns of the warriors before they were able to go forth and do battle for the stars and stripes" In referring to the "Grecian Bend," he said that apart from the more important injury which this posture necessarily compelled, surely nothing could be more inelegant than this atti- tude, which in motion produced ridic- ulous wagging of the body. Why so preposterous posture should be named after nation so purely sesthetic as the Greeks was one of the secrets which belonged to the sponsors of modern fashion and follies. Then that fearful and wonderful head gear called chig- non, in which living, lovely woman faunts the hair of, perhaps, some wretched creature who had died of contagious disease in hospital. AS to the wearing of hair low upon the fore head, and so hiding the evidence of in- tellectuality, that was a false idea of the high standard of Greek beauty, for such style was only used by the Greeks as a type of mere sensual beau ty, model no modern lady should choose to copy.