The News-Herald. [volume] (Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio) 1886-1973, 1895-12-26
A WOMANS WAIST.
lrrepsrable Injury Done BY Tight Lee.
ing.

Ing.
It is matter for rejoicing that fashion
is no longer to decree a slender waist as
something indispensable to propriety
and grace. The natural waist of the
woman of average height is about %
inches, and any less size is attained
only through arrested development, or
compression of means of whale bone and
steel. The amount of room inside these
2s inches is absolutely needed for the
proper working of the machinery of
the internal economy. In spite of this
fact girls very often bind the yielding
ribs into such narrow compass that the
waist measures 20 or % inches only,
and you will now and then hear some
mother of family, with very differ
ent waist now, boast as if it were some-
thing to be proud of that when she was
10 her waist measure was 10 too. It is,
however. of no use to talk to young peo-
pie about the injurious effect of COM
preston on stomach, heart, lungs, liver
and the arterial system. They are not
anatomists, and they do not compre-
hend the matter nor want to do so:
they observe that they feel as well now
as they did before, and without weigh
ing the thought that it requires time
to work ruin, take it for granted that
they always will feel as well, although
they have been told and taught that in
post-mortem examinations it has been
| found that wherever tight lacing has
been the rule, every organ was out of
place and seriously injured. But al
| though it does move them trifle to be
told that red noses and eruptive skins
| and fiat chests are to be laid to the ac-
count of the too slender waist, yet on
the whole neither common-sense nor
auld-wife wisdom nor doctors have the
| power of conviction that fashion does,
and when fashion says that there is no
beauty in wasp's waist, but that the
lines of nobility and health made by
deep breathing are the really lovely
lines, fragility being something rather
to be feared than loved, why then
fragility begins to lie avoided, and the
lines of the Venus de Milo, of the Diana
of the Pallas, begin to come in.
The habit of tight lacing has already
done almost irretrievable injury. If il
were continued there is no knowing
what shape it might eventually have
developed Even no sculptors declare
that model with a natural waist
sloping outward rather than inward
is something not to be found, even the
most charming figures otherwise hav
ing the hour-glass tendency, in how
ever slight form sufficient to spoi
them for posing for anything de
manding the freedom, the beauty anc
grace OF the antique. The Greek
woman supported and stayed her
self with bands of linen, but there
was no compression in the swathe, ant
her natural waist made her of a perfec
beauty; and to-day the natural wais
Of the Circassian does not interfere will
the reputation of her loveliness. Th'
adoption of European dress by ladies
of the harem, and of Japan, showing
: as it does, either want of the knowl
edge of true beauty or willful aban
: donment of it's principles, will prob
ably lead to tight lacing in the orien
just as we are relinquishing it here.
Why anyone should ever have imag
ined that waist which looked as if i
We're going to break in two could b
more attractive than waist whic
looked capable of supporting its hea
and arms and shoulders is mystery
so great a mystery that the effort t
: solve it is to be given up in satisfa6
ton over the report that the foreig
creators Of the mode have recent
asked themselves the question il tn
shape that the Creator chose for tn
human body was one they could i'm
prove.-Harper's Bazaar.