Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1923-04-28

ME- blDI6faShS. w nat man, Dy
taking thought, can add one
cubit to his stature?"
This applies only to men. AS a
man is made, so he remains, but we
have daily visible proof that women
can make themselves over at will.
Witness the fact that the feminine
waistline is a movable feast, and
| that sometimes it is up under a
woman's armpits, and anon it is in
the vicinity of her knees. Also a
woman's countenance is sometimes
of a deathly pallor, with thin scar
let lips, while the next day it may
bloom with the roses of health.
Sometimes a woman is tall and
stately, and again she is little and
cute, while as for her hair, no man
would back his remembrance Of the
color of his lady loves locks with
good money. For she who went
forth in the morning with long
raven tresses is as likely as not to
return at eve with bobbed henna
curls; or she who went into d beauty
shop with mouse-colored hair will
come forth golden blond.
This ability that women have for
| improving on the rough job that
nature turned out when they were
created, and for making themselves
over into something that is easier
on the eyes of their fellow creatures
has mostly taken the form OF re-
! ducing themselves. For nobody
loves a fat woman, and it is gener-
| ally held that the best way for a
wife to retain her husbands affec-
tons is for her to keep a slim and
girlish figure.
Wherefore, there are thousands
upon thousands of haf-famished,
middle-aged wives counting their
Galleries and starving in the midst
of plenty; and thousands upon thou
sands of other feminine martyrs
| hopping around like hens on a hot
griddIe to the grinding Of phono-
graph records, and dragging about
golf courses pursuing a ball they.
hate and loathe, and going through
other forms of torture worthy of
| the inquisition, in a frantic attempt
to reduce in order to make them
selves attractive 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
in her face. Still, men are supposed
to be enamored of the living SHELTON,
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
cto living with a woman who is re-
ducing. She's hungry and crosss.
and her nerves are on edge, and
she is just naturally bound to take
out her temper and irritability on
those around her. So 1 have often
wondered if the men who are mar
ried to chubby ladies who were good
natured, and placid, and well fed,
wouldn't rather have them "as is"
than to have them >converted into
even perfect thirty-sixes.- Perhaps
men are not so set upon willowy-
ness in wives as the wives sup
pose.
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 siren
uous exercise, she has lost 40 love-
ly pounds Of flesh, and is no longer
| in outward appearance the woman
he wooed and married. In fact,
she is to all intents and purposes
another woman altogether.
The woman he married tilted the
scales at $50 pounds, and it was
her gracious curves and soft dim
pies that first shared his fancy.
These are all gone, replaced by hard
angles and osseous structure, and
he prays to be delivered from a
wife who, against his expressed or
ders and desires, converted herself
into the type of woman most re.
pugnant to his taste,
Let us trust that the court will
| rule that neither fat nor emacia-
ton is any cause for divorce. 9th
erwise, no husband or wife should
be sure of his or her job for a single
month.
What men and women are going
to develop into, or make themselves
into physically, is part of the
gamble Of matrimony. Undoubted-
~, many a man who marries a slip
of a girl at 20, and who finds her
a heavyweight at 40, feels that he
has gotten great deal more wife
than he bargained for. And the
woman whose slim, outstanding
bridegroom develops into the bay
xTrir RI
entertalns similar thoughts as she
looks upon him, but it is all part of
the game, and the good sports make
the best of the hand that fate has
dealt them.
1t 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 Woman's deaaliest rival is
not the siren she suspects, but the
girl she used to be. Often woman
only endures living with the man
who sits across the table from her
every day of the year by shutting
her eyes to what he has become and
remembering him as he was when
she married him.
How often a man falls in love
with a girl because she is sweet,
and merry, and sympathetic, and
affectionate. She lets herself grow
into a querulous, complaining, whin-
ing woman with no thought but
for herself. Her home is a place
of gloom. She never shows her
husband any affection, or tender.
I nesss, or appreciation. There is not
one OF the qualities in her that
attracted him, not one trait that
he admires. Wild horses could not
drag him to the altar with this
strange and unlovely woman to
whom he is tied.
How often girl falls in love
with man because he is passion
ately in love with her, because
ha le ho