Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1883-08-18
FAT WOMEN.


a Profess Against An American Tendency.
Philadelphia Ledger.
Arc American women growing in fat
ness and is there NO medium between the
very spare and gaunt figure Of Southern
matron at forty and the excessive plump
ness and growing ungainliness SO many
women of the North exhibit at the SUM-
mer hotels this year? In the Philadel-
phia park" said saucy New Yorker five
years ago, "your carriages have to be
built enormously wide, otherwise there
is not room for the very broad
ehouldered woman who sits 50 com
fortably beside her husband. Are
there no thin ones? How we'll to-do
and comfortable they all must be But it
makes them age early, such embon
point ~ Alas, for the critic The New
Yorker herself by this time has lost all her
willowy outline. In her tight fitting silk
armor Of French gown she appears not
to wear it so much, with room for move
ment, IS to have been solidly and uncom
fortab.y poured into it as into mould
and very heavy one. Sne cannot see the
color Of her belt ribbons, except in the
glass, and it has been not in vain for her
that the fashion Of buttoning boots has
given way to the low cut shoes.
Going further to the portheast the house
ofthe summer boarder shows one spare,
middle aged woman, perhaps, the New
England housskeeper, worn by hard work
to skin and sinew; but behold the ''com
panyw Youth showing the contours OF
age; pretty, good natured, plump part
ridges in . covey on the piazzas, playing
crib6age, picquet or making the crazy
patch" They walk-but not very far
=. Ia x,I Sh,;. A,a n. h,,-
they drive about enormously. This in
creasing obesity of feminine America is
certainly very marked this year. Il car.
not altogether be 4 matter of wrong diet,
and it comes mainly, We suspect, from the
habit OF taking the horse cars for all or
rauds, when the young women of fifty
years ago-the yet slender, graceful fig
ures who are now celebrating their COLDER
weddings-always walked in their young
days for the daily errands and visits.
Some change Of habit is required if thes.
petty, plethcric and yet generetic dame.
are not to be distigured and made helpless
in their prime by adipose tissue. Theil
gowns are somewhat to blame, arms and
che being fashionably girted as tight,
as possible, to follow the present Par
isian rage for fiatness and slightncss %
form. There are very few well.to- i,
American women of thirty, in the North
ern states, who could pass the now nar
row gate OF French artistic form without
being put to torture thereby and ye
fashionable costumers force these ampl,
figures into gowns that handicap then
still more, by actually preventing tho ful
and elastic exercise they 80 much need
Very few of them are able to ride or ca,,
to show themselves ON horseback, which
is to be regretted, as the remedy wOul,
soon prove effective while driving abou
in carriages and using tho horse cars con
stantly certainly increases their dpOirdu
pois For those who care to follow Eng
lish fashions. in tho scclusiOn of countr.
lanes and by-rOads, tho new fashlonc,
tricycle., whish finds favor with tho prin
cess of Wales and othor active ladies
would certainly DO of some service. Sucl
bulky figures do not promise health, ii
they certainly do not cOnduce to comfort
1t is quite time that these porderous ten
denotes Of the American /" fair" at thirt
were begun to be corrected by themselves