The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-08-27
WOMEN ARE VICTIMS OF
 THE SITTING HABIT

Have you ever noticed how the majority of women spend their time during the summer vacation, whether by the seaside of aI Il mountain re- sort? If you do so you will observe that many of them merely hang around and watt for mealtime, meanwhile crocheting slippers for Christmas gifts.
 They sit the summer through on verandas. They have good appetites and they eat, bless them, how they do eat! They get fat, of course they do. That Is how polverers fatten goose or a hen, make 1t sit still and stuff 1t. When they go home the fem mine vacationers have themselves weighed and declare they have gain ed" so many pounds. Are they per haps unaware that fat Is not sign of health-on the contrary. They have taken no physical exercise during the summer, and this muscle strangling fat has infiltrated their bodies and made them clumsy and barrel shaped. You will notice that two-thirds of the women who just sit and sit and sit from morning till night grow barrel shaped. Their bodies settle down about the hips till they lose the use of the great grand muscle of the back and chest and those around the waist. Women who so far as years go are yet in the prime of life count 1t no dis grace to let other people tie their shoes | for them.
 This inveterate sitting habit is largely what causes women to lose their figure" as 1t is called. At summer resort this season I have been particularly interested in comparing women of forty or flrty and their l daughters of eighteen and twenty. The daughter was slim and active; the mother looked a barrel in skirts, just staying where 1t happened to be dumped. Yet ere she had become a victim of the pernicious sitting habit, the mother was even as the daughter slim, active and graceful Nature gave her the right kind of a body | a perfect instrument, in good repair and she simply let 1t go to wreck and ruin. Nature always avenges herself on us if we slight her gifts and do not take care of them.
 They're a lot of old Marys over there," said a young man of such a group of sitters.
 In a book written by an oriental
 psychologist 1t is declared that the first requisite for good health is the perfectly erect position, in reality letting the whole body hang from the ribs instead of letting 1t tumble down upon the hips as tne women sitters do. How can one think high thoughts
 with the chest i'm asks the oriental
 writer. The vicious sitting habit Is peculiarly a feminine one The posi- ton so many women allow themselves
 to slip into enlarges the stomach and contracts the chest, at the same time
 lowing the shoulders. Sometimes you will see a family of half dozen wo-
 men, every one of whom has the sunk
 en chest. round shoulders and prom inent stomach of the habitual sitter. Among the whole six there is not grit enough to lift one breastDone and take a deep breath.
 It is possible for every woman to overcome the barrel shape, even after she has acquired it. and the result is
 well worth the trouble Here is an exercise which, practiced q few min
 utes morning and evening with only
 a loose garment on. will do the work. Place the hands firmly upon the
 stomach, lifting 1t lightly towards the lchin; then throw the head back and