The Northern Pacific farmer. [volume] (Wadena, Minn.) 1878-1885, 1883-04-12
Small Waists.
From the New York Hour.

There is no end to the VagarleS and
delusions of lovely women, but Of all her
follies the worst and most persistent is
her infatuated belief in the necessity for
small waist. Other fashions have their
day and pass away to the limbo of vani~
ties, but the small waist is perpetual.
No woman, that ever we heard Of, has the
temerity that tight lacing is comfortable
or agreeable; and no man who ever put
his arm around natural waist, or who
has the ghost of notion Of what is beau
tiful and becoming, has ever accorded it
anything but condemnation. It compile
tely destroys the elasticity of the female
form, and substitutes for a waist some.
thing as nearly as possible resembling a
chimney-pot. All the grace and poetry
of motion are lost, and one waltzes with
rigid mechanical something which
wooden doll. Much the same effect is
produced upou the spectator in the
street. Walk behind one of these hour
glass figures and you will observe pc
culiar ungainly motion of the upper part
of the body. It sways from side to side,
as if there was but one movable point in
the frame, and suggests the necessity for
the usual hour glass support-three little
pillars, made to meet the protuberant
portions and take the strain off the slen-
der middle. The reason is obvious. The
woman is in splints like a broken limb.
Her body is strapped and bandaged in
to absolute rigidity, and all hexure is
impossible within the limits of constric-
ton. Nature made the whole body
elastic and flexible, constructing for that
end spine jointed in the most elabor
ate way, and very complex set OF mus
cles. Woman's art has practically made
the spine an unben ing rod, and has
gone far to obliterate the muscles alto
gether by denying them exercise and
stinting them of their due share of neur-
ishment. So the whole automatic poise
Of the body is gone, and in it's place we
get a mechanical swaying to and fro
about the center Of gravity. Balance is
preserved by oscillation instead of by
accommodation.
The belief in the beauty ofabsolute
smallness is one of the most vulgar Of
vulgar decisions. A well-proportioned
waist is beautiful, just as well-propor-
toned hand or foot is, but dispropor-
tionate smallness in any of the three is a
defect. We compassionate the Chinese
because they carry the defect SO far as
misapplied ingenuity can do it. but the
Chinese school is wonderfully strong
among ourselves. The real beauty of a
hand or foot is its shape and proportion to
the rest of the body, and the shape is very
difficult to improve by artificial means.
In attempting to reduce the size the
shape is usually destroyed. Nothing is
more charming than well-shaped hand,
and well.fitting glove on such hand
is one OF the most important items OF
woman's dress. But nothing is uglier
than hand crammed into glove which
it was never meant, TO
wear, glove which crowds the g
Cramps the fingers into nselessness
Tie original defects of the hand are no,
remedied in the least; they are only
dwarfed for the moment by artificial
ones. The same remarks apply to the
feet and waist. A waist out of proper
ton to the rest of the body is ugly,
whether it err in being too large or too
small. If it is naturally too large, there
is nothing for it but to make the best OF
the business by dressing so as to reduce
it's apparent size. Women usually try to
reduce the actual size, and then dress as
if the reduced size were the natural one.
They do not deceive practical eye, and
the deception they achieve is dearly
bought by loss of health and irremed
liable collapse of the figure at later Pc
Rod. If they only sought to reacht he
normal proportion, the matter would be
triaing. But no woman who begins the
process ever stops at that point so long
as she has friend with waist smaller
than her own.
OF course in theory the doctors should
warn people of the mischief they are do
ing. They should point out that the
young lady's little ailments are aggrava-
ted if not caused by the liberty she is
taking by anatomy. They should warn
her and her parents that they are de-,
stroying the power of the muscles in
tended by nature to brace and supper,
the figure, and preparing for a collapse
in later life that will defy disguise. But
doctors, like other people,. are very
much what the public makes tnem:
They have their money to make, and
their practice to extend, and they are
not going to injure their prospects by
becoming John Baptists crying in the
wilderness. They will give general
warnings about the evils of tight-lacing,
but if their patients do not choose to
make the application for themselves,
the doctors cannot afford to make in
QUESTION which is pretty certain to be
resented.