Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1926-01-17

oIfI\ uSet 10 letl ii tpill-
n fnrting sort OF fatality
" " about being stout. They
Y accepted il as they would
a retr0uSSe nose or red
hatr or freCkles. The gods had so de-
creed and there didn't seem to he
ANYTHING to do about il. There were
CompenSStioDS. II YOU were too fat
You At least avoided the embarrass
ment of being too thin. You didn't
nave TO resort to pads to give your
form the necessary curves. Besides,
lat people were supposed to be better
naturad than thin ones. and Ralzac
once wrote 1t down as his opinion that
woman who was really attractive
after 40 was almost invaria bly, over
Weight-or something of that sort.
OF course, it didn't make the slight
est difference how much YOU ate.
Why, there was Cousin MarY-you
know, the tail one didn't marry
well. she was paInuIy thin. just like
Il beanStalk, and she ate three times
as much as YOU did. Ready YOU had
= very small appetite. OF course, when
there WAS company YOU ate To be
Sociable, hut when YOU were alone
NOu hardly ate enough 10 keep fiy
alive, and SO it must be that yon
We're meant to be fat.
Being fat offered no special prob
lem in dressing-at least II didn't
seem to. Your dressmaker noted
no doubt. with covert sghs-the in
creasing waist and bust measure. the
shelving out OF hips and shoulders
and back. and needed more material
to make dress. But so long as you
could COntriVe TO draw in Your stays
SO as t. give yourself a fairly small
waist. the addition OF 10 or Il or %
pounds didn't make much difference.
They could he hidden beneath the
gathers of the skirt or under the
blouse of the bodice or in the fullness
Of your sleeves. II your neck and
waists and waist and ankles didn't
look large. YOU felt no special concern
over your increasing pounds.
Doctors and hygieniStS knew, OF
course, the baneful effect of too much
weight, but what they had TO say
sounded on deaf ears. 1t took the
dressmallers and makers of fashion to
start the anti.fat crusade. Within
recent years that elusive goddess
whom We call Fashion has been most
unkind TO the fat woman.
There has been nowhere from chin
TO toe a place In which to hide even
an ounce of suDertluous flesh. 1t
has been useless to affect a small
waist because this would inevitably
lead to increasing the size of the body
above and below the waistline and
would have been impossible at a time
when the fashionable woman set the
outline of a pencil as her ultimate
goal.
The result OF course. has been to
reduce the number of fat women In
the land very, very decidedly and to
send almost every woman who de-
sires to follow the fashion off on diet
ing and reducing courses of all sorts.
The woman Of today knows too
much to consider her too numerous
pounds merely matter of fate. There
is no way for her to gainsay the fact
that Calories are TO blame. To be
sure, there are still Cousin Marys who
eat a lot and remain thin. There may
he something wrong with Cousin
Marys meta bolism. But what the fat
woman does know IS that by strict
diet and exercise she can make herself
thinner. 1t has been lack of suffi-
cient exercise and a too liberal diet
that have made her overweight.
Meantime, until she has got herself
down to the svelte lines that she has
set as her ideal, the stout woman of
today has to consider her clothes
with care. The problem of designing
and making clothes for large" wom-
en- has become a branch of dress
making all itself. Thousands OF work
ers are kept busy just at this task
of making clothes that will At the fat
lady and make her look less fat.
Perhaps the war helped us in this
problem. At least it gave us the word
camoufage, which describes the
process employed by the designer
nowadays when he wants to minimize