Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1873-12-03
PRETTY AND UGLY WOMEN.

NO woman can say truthfully that
she does not care whether she is pretty
or not. Every woman does care. The
immutable laws of her being have made
physical attractiveness as much a
natural glory to her as strength is to a
man.
Here may be told that what l am
saying is superfiuous, for perfect beauty
has no need of art to enhance it, and
that those who have been born with
hard, or worse, with perfectly uninter-
esting features, do not want to be told
that physical attractiveness is indispen-
sable to them. But it is especially to
the plain, and to the generally i'll
favored that l address these words Of
advice and warning, and should Beau
tvs self find few useful hints, see
no reason why she should not avail her.
self of them. l know that there are
people who look well anywhere and
anyhow-no vulgarity, no carelessness
of speech, dress or attitude seems able
to disenchant them. But these rarely
gifted persons are but the exceptions
that prove the rule, and even in their
case what Sir Philip Sidney spake is
true-he says there is in that well-chos-
en- surroundings
(Which does even beauty beautify,
And most bewitched the captived eye;"
and Herrick, too, in his Poetry of
Dress" seems to have had an astute
appreciation of how beauty may be
beautifed These men lived in the six
teenth century, time when color in
dress was an understood and valued ad-
junct, and before we had learned to
make our dwellings, intolerable to the
eye.
An immense number of ill-tempered,
ugly women are ll-tempered because
they are ugly. They do not know it;
their friends don't understand, and
make no allowance; but heavy, indeed,
is the burden upon these poor women,
and pernicious in its effect upon their
moral character very often. l have
heard it said that ugly women are
always bad tempered. This is an over
statement; but there is certain degree
of truth in the saying, cruel as it is.
An ugly child cares nothing for its ug-
illness; but when it grows older, and
perceives that it lacks something which
is priced and honored, and is twitted
with the deficiency, and neglected
through it, and is reminded of it
every time it looks in the glass or
In another face, the constant disap-
pointment begins very early to embit-
ter the whole nature, and creates a mel
ancholly shyness. And when the de-
sire to attract awakes with years, and
the young girl finds her fairer friends
preferred before her, the vain endeav-
ors to please by other means dishearten
her, and she grows sarcastic, ill-natured,
envious of everybody, though half un-
consciously; many other faults follow,
and she becomes unhappy and morose.
No one ever knows what she suffers;
but she does suffer very acutely.
/ am certain that however laudable
the efforts of ugliness to attract by
learning, by accomplishments, by gen.
eral usefulness, or by satire, nothing
really compensates for the want of per-
sonal beauty. The best that an ugly
woman can do is to make you forget
that she is ugly for the time being;
she cannot compensate. And while |
should advise all women to become as
intelligent and clever as they can,
whether they be plain or pretty, still l
wish mere beauty were made more an
and honorable art than
it is by all thoseto whom God has given
eyes and an intelligent brain. 1t is not
a sin nor a folly to long, as every
woman longs, to be lovely. She is so
constituted, and her beauty sis glory
to her."