The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1900-06-16
woMAN's WORST FOE IS DRESS.
It Kills Her in Spite of the T1ct That
She Devotes Her Life to It.

BY VISCOUNTESS HABERTON.
In spite of all the devotion of women
to dress, it is a sad fact that this very
thing has become their worst enemy.
Not because the love of adornment is
wrong, nor because the wish to be adj
mired is other than natural, but be-
cause women cannot be got to discern
! the great difference between deformity
and adornment nor to perceive that
truth and reality must be the right
and only foundation of all true art.
Consequently their dress has become
a mere tangles mass of materials. Elk
! tremely artificial, and being in its first
conception not only hideous but also
! opposed to every natural line. 1t re-
! quires all sorts of eXtraneous decora-
! ton to make it bearable.
1t seems absurd to have to remind
| people what the actual form is which
| they are seeking to clothe, but it is
almost necessary for the sake of argu
ment Beginning at the shoulders, it
may be described roughly as an upper
part of a nearly straight, oblong shape,
supported upon two comparatively
slender legs, the narrowest part being
at the feet and ankles.
Can this resemble anything less than
an upper part with a sudden constric
ton in the middle narrowing it to al
most a second neck, and supported, not
on two legs at all, but on long single
barrel with the widest part on the
ground? For that is the outline of the
form which unavoidably rises before
the minds eye at the thought of the
appearance of any woman.
1t is perfectly certain that this COM
preston in the center of the body, be-
ing entirely unnatural and only achiev-
ed by outside pressure begun in youth,
does incalculable harm, as nature has
planned the inside organs to fit into
the space, arranged without any taper
ing at the waist line. The exaggerated
corset-made waist is therefore pro-
duced by a compression sufficient to
displace these organs to a certain ex-
tent.
If they remained firm and in their
places no alteration of shape could be
attained for 1t is useless for people to
attempt to deny the displacement Be
ing then more or less out of their right
positions they are unable to fulfill their
functions properly and become more or
less congested, giving rise gradually to
a long string of ailments which con-
stantly tend to become chronic.
There is, however, no possibility of
getting rid of this waist compression
unless some form of dress visibly two
legged is to replace the skirt Without
it the barrel shape would continue in
ar unbroken line Gike a Noah's ark
figure) from the shoulder to- the ground
and though this would be no whit more
unnatural than the waist compressed
shape, il would be more 'monotonous
and clumsy looking. So the two things,
skirts and waist construction, being in
terdependent, viii forever stand or fall
together.
It is not too much to put this even
more strongly, for if we picture to our
selves such figures as we daily and
hourly see among us with a nineteen or
twenty-inch waist and think of them
unclothed and with two legs, we cannot
think of them without shudder as I'M
natural monstrosities.
Why women cling to this very strange
mode of dress is one of the most puz-
zling things in the history of the race.
No dress can well be more inconveni- |
ent for all active occupations than |
skirt 1t doubles the toll Gf all who |
have to work. making carrying any |