The daily Cairo bulletin. (Cairo, Ill.) 1878-1???, 1879-10-04
FEMALE BEAUTY THEN AND NOW.
WERE OUR GRANDMoTHERs OR ARE THEIR
GRAND-DAUGHTERs THE MORE BEAUTIFUL.

| VI oul doicst PcuS, Nv Wcll III luc ucWSpu-
pers of the country as in the more carefully
prepared magazines and periodicals.
The personal beauty of our grandmoth-
ers, in their time, and the granddaughter
of those grandmothers NOW, forms topic
which Isaac II. Stoutmeyer, an able south
ern writer, discusses as follows: "Nere the
American women, in the days of our grand
mothers, ne inquiries, any more beautiful than
are their granddaughter today A retired
and phllosophic Boniface asserts that the
women of to-day are handsomer because
tlley are better fed than in old times. lie
claims to have had unusual opportunities
fo' observation, and is sure that there has
BEEN a vast improvement in American
female beauty in the short time measured
by two generations. He declars that fifty
years ago all the young girls OF the richand
well-to-do classes were pale, slender, wan
faced, narrow-chested, stoop-shouldered,
wearing generally the appearance Of deli,
cate constitutions and feeble health. What.
ever Of beauty they had was spiritual rather
than physical; theirs was the fair palor, or
the hectic bloom of disease, rather than the
glow and vigor and flush of health. This
at any rate is what our gastronomic philoso-
pher says Of our grandmothers.
|
Whether or not the facts are as they are
stated must be decided by those who knew
the women Of three generations ago when
they were young ladies. This deponent
cannot speak from any actual experience on
the subject. Our personal recollection is,
! however. that the srandmothers> were stall
wart and substantial ladies. eminently able
to use the slipper or other engine of dis
cipllne and punishment with great vigor on
the young culprit. The philosopher, whose
theory we are recording, declares, however,
to the contrary, and insists that the young
women of fifty years or 50 ago
were imbued with the idea that it was ex-
ceedingly vulgar for lady to be given to
gastfonomic indulgences To eat heartily
was gross and unrefined, and to eat certain
sorts Of food, such as eggs, oysters and the
like, was little short of positive impro-
priety. Bread and butter and a little tea
were the staples Of the fare allowed to the
truly refined young ladies, while a general
starvation policy was considered the right
thing for them. Add to this tight lacing
then in vogue and you have the primary
causes of constitutional decay and estab.
lished i'll health which preyed upon and
steadily destroyed the beauty Of American
women.
In the present generation this entire
policy has been changed. Tight laciug is
obsolete, and woman, so far from thinking
it gross and vulgar to eat, are cmancipated
from all restraints and eat and drink what
they please. As result radical change
has taken place in the health and phys-
que Of American women. They are we'll
nourished and hence they are full of blood
and vigor, They grow in stature, they cX-
pand IN form, they gain in avoirdupois, and
the hues OF health glow on their faces.
Good feeding is thus declared to be the
panacea for every disease and the true
cosmetic for the restoration Of beauty. The
high feeding school has taken the place Of
the starvation system, and with it has de.
veloped a taste Tor embonpoiAt,
buxomness, redness and refund
ity THIS is an Old World taste
and to it the New World is coming. The
Chinese, the Hottentots, the Turks and
other Eastern people admire fat beauties
The hours Of Mahomet's paradise are 70.
tund, with faces like moons, while q lean
woman finds no favor in celestial eyes. The
masculine taste in Europe is conforming
! itself to such an ideal, and this type of
beauty would seem to be growing in de-
mand in our own country We have not
got the national taste up to this point yet,
but doubtless 1t will grow to II in time; and
there must be severe courses of gormandia-
ing, and fearful risks of colics and indiges.
ton before we get our girls into the fashion.
Fashion is imperious and imperial, and if
we are to have fat fairies and adpose
angels as our types of beauty, then we will
have them at any cost. The fertility of re-
source that can change the brunette to the
blonde at will, can surely find some way to
develop becoming corpulence IN the most
delicate and fragile and willowy OF our
! maids.