Morning journal and courier., 1888-01-07

I to "cutt there laces" because there is lese need for it now than then, in spite of the ru. ! nor that fashion is imposing thirteen-inch waists at the present moment.
 Tight-lacing is no doubt largely due to fe l male rivalry; but this rivalry has an object beyond the simple desire of women to make l themselves comedy in each others eyes, and that object is, we venture to surmise, the ap- preciation or admiration of the other sex, not of course in any unworthy sense, but simply in an instinctive way, which has been obscured and almost lost sight of in the Tou- tine practice of amiability which results from social intercourse. But the question
 here arises, Do men really admire small
 waists, and are they responsible, directly or
 indirectly, for the tortures and the ill-health
 which no doubt do often result from tight-
 lacing? It is quite useless to ask men this
 question. Many Of them have formed no
 opinion on the subject, and those who have
 do not care to confess what it is. One thing
 is quite certain, that men admire 8 youthful figure, youthfulness itself being the chief at
 traction, and this is generally associated with
 and indicated by small waist and it is we fear the desire to appear youthful by women
 whose figure has become mature that gives rise to great deal of tight-lacing-a eondi-
 ion of things for which men are not
 bound to take the whole blame. But this motive for tight-lacing does not cover the whole ground of our inquiry, and we think
 
 kind does not admire small waists in women kind, and men are not, therefore, responsible for the pain and mischief which tight -lecing indicts on so many individuals of ouz >e
 If men as a whole cared for small V .or
 their own sake, we should long se had
 developed a small-waisted raS- .- women
 (and men, too, for it would have been trans-
 mitted to both sexes) by selection, which
 ought to have rendered tight-lacing unneces-
 sary in these latter days; but neither by this
 kind of sexual selection nor by the repeti-
 tion of the habit of tight-laeing through nu-
 merous generations, has there been the
 slightest apparent change in the natural
 shape of the body, either in the circumfer-
 ence of the waist or in the position of the internal organs. Every child which is born of tight-lacing European race appears to
 be identical in physical conformation with
 the children born of women of other races
 who have never known corsets, while the
 healthy women of our own day who have not
 been individually subject to tight-lacing do
 not differ in form and physical proportions
 from the models of the ancient Greek sculp-
 tors. Thus it would seem that tight-lacing
 is in part prompted by our natural sense of
 proportion in the human figure, in part by
 rivalry of the young by the net young, and
 in part by the spur of fashion and individu-
 al rivalry among women themselves. On the other hand there does not seem to be any strong provocation to tight-lacing. we'll proportioned figures do not depend on the
 relative circumference of the waist, but on
 the relative length of the two divisions of
 the body, tight-lacing when this does exist in short persons serving rather to empha- size the defect than to correct it by throw ing the point of division too low down; nor is there any evidence that men admire small waists as 8 sexual character; and as no per- manent change in the hgure has resulted af- ter many generations of tight-lacing, it is probable that it is practiced by only very small section of womankind, but that unfor- tunately the most intelligent and influential section. We have said nothing of the evils of tight-lacing to the individuals who prac- tice it, as to do justice to the subject would require separate article.