The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1899-02-12
DECAY OF FEMALE BEAUTY.
AN EMINENT PORTRAIT PAINTER
NAMES A POTENT CAUSE.

Clothes and Rafting Witty
TOngue-One Cause of Early Fad
ing Loss of Beauty, Is That Women
To-day Either Over study or Is
Growing Horny Handed, with
Heavy Muscles, a Weather Beaten
skin and Enough Hair.
New York, Feb. Ids physical beauty
in women on the decHne?" was a question
propounded the other day to Sir Edward
Poynter, the president of the Royal Acad-
envy.
Sir Edward. who has put as many fair
feminine faces on canvas as any artist of
his time, raped out an uncompromising
yes. The painter undoubtedly spoke for
his own country and within the range of
his own experience; nevertheless it is OBJ
vious that a similar assertion may be made
concerning women in America.
THE United States. in the past hundred
years, has certainly produced a greater
number of handsome women than any
other civilized country, but, unfortunately,
since feminine beauty defes statistics, we
have no figures to compare on the subject,
for all that the standard of beauty among
our women grows lower every year." said
a New York portrait painter, whose work
is known from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
There are a number of reasons to be
cited ae responsible for the ex-
istence of this conditions he
said. zone of the most potent
7 -, ~
of the nineteenth century, and especially
the American man, to physical perfection
in womankind.
Even fifty years ago they were vastly
more sensitive to its influence and inter-
ested in It's phases. Young fellows half
a century back read poetry, nourished ro-
mantle dreams, wore their hair about
their ears and indited verses, in imitation
of Byron, to dark eyed Inez and golden
haired Helen. Fairy forms, cluster
ing ringlets, azure orbs, etc, fit
ted through their dreams, and the woman
whose appearance tailed in a measure
with these standards was reverenced and
adored as the ideal sweetheart and wife
HE did not care a rap whether Inez
could read Greek or not, or understood a
word of parliamentary law, but he did de-
light over her bushes, her swan throat
and alabaster shoulders, and the portrait
painters of that day prove, beyond the
shadow of a doubt, that she possessed most
of these charms in an abundance we don't
see any longer.
IAN ugly girl was in rather hard lines
then, good tempered and witty as she
might be, for the young man was roman
tic, and it was the Sweet Alice with no
great intellectual force, but lots of brown
hair, dewy freshness and tin1id admiration
of him, who infiamed his sentimental heart.
Her beauty was her stock in trade, she and
her mother knew it's value and everybody
envied and worshipped it.
Nowadays the girl who sets out to rule
in society, by the virtue of lovely face
and figure, is apt to find herself queening
it over a very few masculine subjects. l
don't know whether the men or the women
are to blame for this change but certain
it is that no matter if she be as subtly
graceful as Cleopatra, as fair as Helen of
Troy, she will have no SWANS adoring her
for those gifts of nature alone. What the
modern man now admires is lively Miss,
whose tongue rattles as brisk a measure
as castanets who has spontaneous ready
laugh, who can make golf balls sing
through the air, who is full of grit and
go and jokes, who is not afraid to put a
cigarette between her lips, who is in short
a jolly good fellow. If her feet are small,
and her clothes in the hight of fashion she
is a belle and easily passes muster as a
beauty whose claim nobody disputes. AN
the poetry and the novels of the day pro-
claim the supremacy of this little lady. The
novelsts no longer bother to tell you
whether their heroines are fair or not, no.
body cares. HeroineS who have an in
duence like the chic women who rule in
society, don't rest on any such laurels as
i
teeth. Those were the weapons of women
of another time, both in books and in real
life.
To-day, If woman must have admlra-
ton, she either goes in for athletics or
learning, or she dresses her daring viva
cious little self up in Paris gowns and thus
earns her belleship. Whe Their she does this
because she prefers to be athletic, and
learned and what not else, to her old
power beauty, or whether she has grasp
ed at them as substitutes for her lost and
irretrievable loneliness, 1 don't vouch. 1t
is enough to say that they are bound to
suffice and every one is apparently happy,
except the artists and sculptors who find
it harder and harder every year to secure
proper models.
'All these, however, are not the prime
reasons for the decay of beauty Men are
philosophic and have learned to estimate
cause the new woman has not mucn beau
ty to offer. There is a notion prevalent
among the gentler sex that ii is very fool
ish to waste time nourishing her bodily
charms, that there are more important
callings in this world. Having decided to
underestimate this great gift she is as
busy as possible destroying it,
"She is doing 1t by over-study for one
thing. In payment for her book learning
she is contracting her chest, extingushng
the limpid light in her eyes and bleaching
her cheeks. In payment for her tremend-
GUS athletics she is growing horny palmed
with heavy muscles, running the contours
of her limbs, her complexion is weather
beaten and her hair is rough. In society
she overwhelms her strengthWith so many
duties and pleasures and such eXtravagant
rich food that she is the victim of govt,
nerves, neuralgia and dyspepsia and ILL
health has Slapped her color, spoiled her
figure and aged her before her time.
ITO sum up my argument, would con-
clude that the whole course of our civili-
cation is against the growth of feminine
beauty Men no longer care for it, and