The advocate., 1894-11-21
PRONOUNCED GIRTH.
AMERICAN WOMEN DISLIKE 1T BE-
LOW THE WAIST.

Correct Mode Of Sitting and Other Means
OF Keeping q Good Figure--Activity Of
Muscles Cure For Obesity.
There Is one terror which oVerhangs
nearly all women who have passed 80, and
which Mrs. Burton Harrison, in The An
glomaniacs, has very felicitously touched
upon in the delineation of one of her char
aoters. This is the fear of increasing girth
below the waist. American women are
pursued by this nightmare to an extraor-
dinary degree, because in America 1t is
not considered at all a beauty for a WON.
an to curve out voluminously at the point
where her corset board broadens into the
spoon shape. Very decidedly the contrary.
It is otherwise in France. There women
do not object to certain abdominal protu-
beranoe. They think 1t very undesirable
to sink fatty downward instead. When
nature has given them that sort Of confor-
nation, they do their best to change it by
a system of padding deftly put into the
lining Of the dress skirt or of the coat.
Our American women 60 to Paris, and
they return. They get many new ideas,
and they embrace many new fads, sug-
gested to them by their Parislan friends
and by the fashionable modistes. But the
love for the abdominal protuberance they
do not acquire They remain stanohly
American in this one distinct prejudice
against the faintest suspicion Of anything
Of the kind.
And they are quite right Even the
French advocate Of such protuberance
would be quick to confess that it can cer-
tainly go too far. And how rapid 1t Is In
going too fart She who does not take the
very first symptoms Of increased girth In
time is running great risk.
Once let weight settle here, and it 10
hard enough to get rid Of it again. And
yet the thing can be done, with persever-
ance and the determined following Of a
system of muscular exercise devised by a
professor of athletics some few years ago.
But so efficacious treatment, and one apt
to be precious boon to so many women,
can we'll be repeated. Before the cure,
however, comes the prevention. And how
Is that to be managedP Dieting, walking
and lacing are the three things usually
advised to keep the stomach down. Diet
ing to suppress flesh is very often Of no
avail, and in any case could not have any
local effect. The same may be said Of walk
ing. AS to lacing, there are times when
the snug drawing Of the stays has good
results in this line.
The prudent woman will not make her
self comfortable by donning wrapper
and loosening the stays very soon after
heavy meal. There are times in Women's
lives when fast clinging to a moderately
tight corset Is their only means Of main
tanning their figure at all. But in the or
dinary practice it is mistake to lace too
much when there is abdominal flesh. We
have all seen benighted women who
squeezed themselves in till they could
scarcely breathe and yet beneath whose
corset, were it ever so stiff and so long,
the figure escaped in the most ungainly
curves. Remember that If you have super |
fluous flesh it must go somewhere, and
that to unduly compress 1t in one spot is
simply to throw it into another. The ideaI
figure for the stout woman as well as fol
the lean is q symmetrical one.
Better be larger, more loosely belted,
around the waist, and less disproportion-
ately obese above and below. Lacing doeI
not reduce the trunk; rather does 1t, with
stout people, enlarge it by effectually pre-.
venting any action Of the muscles. Wher.
ever the muscles are not used the adlposa
tissue has q predispositlon to form more
quickly.
Where there are signs Of an increase Of
size, footstools and cushions for the feet
must be eschewed, for the position in
which the body is placed when the feet are
thus elevated tends to make all the flesh
of the trunk sag heavily downward. The
habitual attitude assumed in sitting and /
in standing Is altogether Of the utmost
Importance In determining whether the .