The Vancouver independent. (Vancouver, W.T. [Wash.]) 1875-1910, 1877-09-20

American women are handsome, though
they say they are SO fragile that they
early lose their freshnesss, and with it
much of their beauty. They particularly
remark the tendency of our women to
grow thin with years, while we remark
the tendency of their women to the &C
emulation of flesh as soon as they have
passed their youth, and often even before
that period. While we must allow that
our women are, for the most part, lack
ing in roundness, there are few of US, we
imagine, who would not infinitely prefer
the new world slenderness to the old
world stoutness. A medium between
the two might be the standard Of the
becoming, and this medium we seem to
be approaching, slowly perhaps, but
steadily. The opinion of the thinness of
the feminine part of the nation is based
rather on what has been than on what is.
The majority of our women are still too
lean for beauty, but they are far less lean
than they were twenty five or even fifty
years ago.
This fact-for fact it unquestionably
is-can scarcely have escaped observa-
ton. 1t is noticeable ever ywhere, par
ticularly in large towns and cities, and is
due to different causes, all of which are
easily recognized. The freshness of a
people depends largely on the age and
development of their country. Where
everything is new, and, in certain sense,
raw, as in this land, there is very little
leisure or repose. Our entire energies
are directed to our advancement; our
minds are absorbed by thought of the
future and what it promises. We hardly
take time to get flesh; we think and fret
off that which we have acquired, instead
of acquiring more. Our women do not
perform so much physical labor as our
men, bat they work longer in their way,
and worry more; and anxiety or any
form Of mental disturbance insures mea-
greness as nothing else does. These live
too much through the mind to live quite
comfortably through the body, and the
body suffers in consequence. In the old
world everything is fixed. The future is
not likely to be different from the pres
emit; there is small occasion for wistful-
ness of solicitude. Material conditions
are not usually so favorable there as here,
but they are permanent, and by their
permanence, especially by the clear I'M
Outstanding that they are so, they beget
content, whence adipose matter. Amer
lean women neither work nor worry as
they used. The republic is more devel-
oped, things are more settled, somewhat
OF the European feeling is creeping into
the national mind, and less thinness is
the result.
American women take vastly better
care of themselves than formerly. They
have more acquaintance with hygenic
laws, and hold them in far higher es-
TEEN. The days when they exposed
themselves to dampness and wintry cold
in thin slippers and silk stockings, when
they abstained from flannes next the
skin; when they pinched their waists to
semi Justification, when they sacrificed
comfort and health to what they con-
ceived to be their appearances-those
foolish and unhappy days have gone Tor
ever, have barely been known to the ris-
ing generation. Our women now have
mawkish and morbid notions as to them
selves; they no longer think that to be
unhealthy is to be attractive; that indi-
vidualism and interestingness are syn
onymous; that pale faces and compressed
lungs are tokens of beauty. They dress
seasonably; they wear thick boots and
warm clothes in bad and cold weather;
they allow themselves to breathe freely,
and they find their looks improved, not
injured, by the wholesome change. There
are exceptions, many Of them, doubtless,
but the rule is as we have described, and
the exceptions are constantly diminish
ing. 1t may be safely said that all SEN
sible women are becoming, if they have
not yet become, converts to nature and
that they heed their behests, recognizing
the great principle that what is not nat
ural cannot be beautiful.
Little moe than quarter of century
ago young American women were
ashamed to show a hearty appetite in
public. They were infected with the
Byronic philosophy; they wanted to he
spiritual-as if all true spirituality did
not rest on sound physical conditions
and to look elegantly wretched. Many
of them had half their wish; they looked
wretched, but not elegant. They we're
charged with drinking vinegar, eating
slate pencils, and committing other
monstrous absurdities. They may have
been unjustly accused, but their theories
warrant the accusation. All such nom
sense belongs to the past. American
women to-day eat as much as they want,
and more wholesome food than they once
ate; they walk more, court the open air,
cultivate their bodies as well as their
minds, believe in perfect digestion, uu-
h. lxos~ ola Nkn al