The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-04-26

ing themselves For body Ioyes a Tat woman, and it is generally held that the best way for a wife to re- tain her husbands affections is for her to keep a slim and girlish figure
 Wherefore. there are thousands | upon thousands of half-famished mlddie-aged wives counting their caiories. and starving in the midst or plenty; and thousands upon thou sands of other feminine martyrs htp- l ping around like hens on a hot grid die to the grinding of phonograph records, and dragging about golf courses pursuing ball they hate and forms of torture worthy of the in quisition, In a frantic attempt to re- duce in order to make themselves at tractive in some mans eyes.
 And. at the price of untold suf fering. they do change themselves from fair, fat and forty into what looks like haggard, and fifty, for every time a woman subtracts from her waistline, she adds to the lines Tn her face. Still. men are suppose to be enamored of the living skeleton, and it is up to every woman to be as bony as she can.
 Now, living with a sore-headed bear Is bed of roses compared to | .''AHo Nieh a " oildu WHO IS TeuuC- ing. She's hungry. and cross, and her nerves are on edge. and she is just naturally bound to take cut her | temper and irritability on those | around her. So I have often won dered If the men who are married to tnred. and placid. and well fed, wouldn't rather have them "as is' than to have them converted into even perfect thirty-sixes. Perhaps men arc not so set upon willtwyness in wives as the wives suppose.
 A case in point, that seems to prove this contention, is furnished by a man who has recently sued his wife for divorce because by means of a rigorous diet and strenuous exercise. she has lost 70 lovely pounds of flesh, and is nG longer In outward appear ance the woman he wooed and mar ried. In fact. she is to all intents and purposes another woman alto gether.
 The woman he married tilted the scales at 1S0 pounds, and it was her gracious curves and soft dimples that first snared his fancy. These are all gone, replaced by hard angles and osseous structure, and he prays to be delivered from a wife who, against verted herself Into the type of woman most repugnant to his taste.
 Let us trust that the court will rule that neither fat nor cancellation is any cause for divorce. Otherwise, no husband or wife would be sure of his or her job for n single month.
 What men and women are going to develop into. or make themselves into physically. is part of the gamble of matrimony. Undoubtedly, many a man who marries a slip of girl at 20. and who finds her a heavyweight at 40, feels that he has gotten a great deal more wife than he bargained for. And the woman whose slim, up standing bridegroom develops into the bay widowed architecture style of man entertains similar thoughts as she looks upon him. but it is all part of the game, and the good sports has dealt them.
 It is true, however. that many men and women find in middle life that their wives and husbands have so changed that they are no more the women and men they married than if they were other people.
 Often a woman's deadiiest rival is not the siren she suspects. but the girl she used to be. Often a woman only endures living with the, man every day of the year by 'sbutsk4s her eyes to what he has becoA SaS.1 re- memberinE him as he wa. ~t.r sh" married him. ,S,
 DoRo- Copyright. 1923, by Pu '
 Company.) i---