Chapter IV
Physical Health and Beauty
IN THE efforts made in the last half century or so to “reform" the clothes of women; an effort made, as we have before stated, mainly with a view to health improvement, and secondarily for greater beauty; some natural confusion has resulted from our lack of clear understanding as to the full meaning of either.
Health, to most people, consists in the absence of disease, just as virtue is held to consist in the same negative quality—absence of sin.
The virtue of high well-doing, which often co-exists with many minor errors, we do not so popularly demand, nor the health which means the highest functioning of all our parts and processes, full-powered. As to beauty, that universal blessing, the desire of every heart, no subject of common discussion is so little understood. Yet in so concrete an instance as the human body and its clothing, we ought not to be so uncertain.
The measure of good health in a milch cow is not merely in a sleek hide and a lustrous eye, but in the amount and quality of her milk. In a horse we estimate his health not by being able to stand up in his stall and eat heartily without indigestion, but by ability to go fast and pull strongly.
A woman may be “well" in the sense of not being sick, yet remain throughout life at a grade of health far lower than was easily possible, or without ever developing to her natural power limit. Because of this we fail to appreciate the effect of articles and methods of dress which do not indeed kill, but which do check development and lower vitality.
To appreciate this we must observe the dress of women from early childhood, from where this external form of sex-distinction is prematurely forced upon little girls.
The play of young animals repeats, in free pleasurable discharge of energy, modes of action proper to their race, as cubs and kittens play at hunting and fighting, while lambs and kids merely run and jump about. In a creature of such numerous activities as man, we find the young given to an extremely varied range of play impulse, and among any set of free and active boys their play tends to develop all their muscles and to strengthen quick nervous coordination. To these processes their dress conforms.
But the dress of little girls is built on other lines. Exception being made for the present popularity of “rompers” and “knickers” among the more intelligent few, there remains a marked distinction from the time the boy is put in his first “knee-pants."
This distinction is three-fold; in material, in shape, and in management—in the accompanying attitudes and manners required.
In material the boy's clothing will stand more wear, and will not as easily “show dirt." The girl is still in starched white muslin, or in soft light wool or silk, while the boy is wearing heavier, darker, stronger goods. The girl's clothes are thus more liable to wear and tear, and also to appear mussed and soiled, so making work for the mother. We must not forget that fifteen out of sixteen of our mothers "do their own work," and most of those who keep servants only keep one, and have to consider her limitations of strength and temper. In either case the tendency is to check the girl's play activities in the interests of saving labor.
The shape of her garments exerts a similar influence. Because of our profound conviction that skirts are inseparable from femininity, we insist on clothing our girl children in skirts, although their constant tendency to be active has induced us to shorten them until sometimes they are absolutely broader than they are long—a mere waist-ruffle. Because of this shape come the limits in management.
Beneath these skirts the child's body is covered only with scant thin white undergarments, wholly visible unless those so-essential skirts are kept carefully vertical. Add to this our antique convictions of the extreme immodesty of the human body, and you have a steady pressure exerted on the little girl, calling upon her to “sit still," to “pull your skirt down," and generally to refrain from any action which might invert those brief hangings and expose her unexhibitable legs.
Admitting fully how much we have improved in the last few decades, it is still true that for the vast majority of our children this improvement has not been vouchsafed, almost all little girls are still handicapped from infancy by a more constant demand upon them to keep still, to behave decorously, and not to soil or tear those so easily soilable and tearable skirts. This check in the free general activities of childhood lasts through life. The vigorous girl may be a good walker; she may dance long and well, thus proving the possession of good muscles and of endurance, but she lacks that full coordination of all muscles which the untrammeled boy develops. She grows stiff sooner, ages earlier, falls more readily, is more liable to strain and sprain because of being less able to promptly recover herself in falling.
Because of her clothing and the attitudes and habits which go with it, the woman is comparatively crippled in action. Look at her getting on or off a street car, climbing up on anything, or jumping down. She may achieve it, in a determined scramble; she has the anatomical capacity, but is awkward and inefficient for lack of full exercise. We have always assumed that this was due to the physical limitations of women. It is not. It is solely due to the limitations of their clothes and of the conduct supposed to belong to them.
It is not in the nature of girl children to sit quiet and keep their clothes clean. They would keep on romping and playing as boys do; they do so keep on in the cases where they are allowed; but very early comes the parental mandate on one side and the boy's scornful repudiation on the other; after which he continues enjoying the exercises which give full free muscular development, while she begins to "sit still."
Without reference to any specific injury from a given article of woman's dress, it may be clearly shown that her clothing as a whole limits action, and so limits both health and beauty. We, as a race, live at a very low rate of activity, and of that physical beauty proper to our species. This is by no means exclusively due to our clothing, but, as distinguished from that of men, the dress of women does materially interfere with their full human development.
The single fact of the continuous soft pressure of the skirt—check, check, checking every step through life, a pressure slight in a full skirt, absolutely hindering in a “hobble skirt," is enough to alter the shape and limit the growth of the leg muscles.
A woman who in the privacy of her own home puts on a light gymnastic suit, in which to do her housework, realizes at once the previous limitation of the skirt. So does she when in mountain climbing, she goes part way, skirted, and then removes that article and goes on in knickerbockers. Even one skirt is some hindrance.
Whenever we have been forced to admit the injurious limitations of women's clothes we have met the charge by alleging it to be a necessity, or as something inherent in the nature of women, and also by our perverted ideas of beauty and decorum.
If we are not clear as to standards of human health, still less are we clear as to standards of beauty. The question of beauty, in this matter of women's clothing, is broadly divided between the beauty of the human body, with the essential distinctions of femininity, and the beauty of textile fabrics, with their mechanical and decorative distinctions.
As the simplest, most easy to establish, part of this complex subject, we will consider bodily beauty first, both as human, and as feminine. And here the aesthetist, the Hellenist, the Hedonist, may be heard in deep, well-founded complaint. Of all beauty that most surely appealing to the human perception is naturally our own. Yet we, in the course of social development, have not only lost sight of that universal joy, by covering ourselves like caddice worms with casings of other substances, but have also lost the true perception of what our human beauty is. Still further, by covering, by neglect, by our false standards, we have deeply injured our own normal development, our natural beauty, so that an ordinary human body, stripped of its coverings, is too often but a sorry thing, lean or lumpy, ill-formed, ill-connected, a pathetic object.
Physicians, who see the human body at its worst, do not attach to it the aesthetic pleasure which artists, searching always for the best, still feel.
To most of us, so powerful are the associative processes of the brain, a naked human body suggests only impropriety.
It remains true that the love of beauty is common to all of us, and that-other things being equal—the most beautiful object, to a human being, is a human being. If (that large and comforting word If!) we would in the first place study, understand, and fully develop human beauty; and secondly let it be seen; we might live in a world of walking statues and pictures. But these “ifs" never accomplish much.
Meanwhile, for the purposes of this treatise, we must establish some standard of human beauty with such modification as is essential to femininity, in order to show the effect upon it of the dress of women.
To escape for the moment from the confusion and prejudice so deeply covering the subject of human beauty, let us first look at the beauty of race and the beauty of sex in another species—a familiar species, the horse. Suppose we have before us, as not difficult to obtain, three pictures, representing, in identical attitudes, three race horses; valuable, successful, record-breaking race-horses; a mare, a stallion, and a gelding. As horses they are splendid specimens, all beautiful. The mare may differ slightly in appearance from the gelding; the stallion differs more markedly, but still not so much as in the least to obscure their common “points." The beauty of the horse is in certain lines, certain proportions, certain powers and methods of action, which are equine. Mare, stallion and gelding, if they are good horses, are all beautiful as horses, and so we measure them. Do we consider the stallion more beautiful than the mare because his neck is thicker and more arched, through his fighting propensities? Do we consider the mare as more beautiful than the stallion because she is relatively lighter in build? Do we consider the gelding less beautiful than either because he is merely a horse, lacking the proud mien of the male or the slimmer grace of the female?
Of course when we, the human species, judge horses, the equine species, we judge them only as a species, and the beauty we see in them is the beauty of race. If they could so judge us, and thought us beautiful—which is not likely—they would judge similarly, by race-distinction, not by sex-distinction.
But if the horses were judging one another, the mare might admire some prodigiously strong fierce thick-necked stallion, or the stallion admire some especially sleek, plump little mare, without either of them caring for the real equine standard. As for the gelding, neither would admire him, though he might be the best horse of the three. And if the stallion did all the judging, preferring and selecting mares that were small and plump and feeble, it is plain that he would at once ignore and degrade the beauty of his splendid race.
That is what has happened to humanity. When a man says, "Beauty," he thinks “woman." It is not beauty, human beauty, which he has in mind, but sex-attraction, and that is quite another matter. He had admired in the female qualities opposite to his own, and has cultivated them to such an extent as to quite forget the basic human qualities.
In a book entitled "Mrs. Walker on Female Beauty", published in New York in 1840, there are 400 pages of advice and suggestion devoted to “Regimen, Cleanliness and Dress," but no picture, no reproduction of a statue, no recognizing description, of any standards of beauty for the human form.
Another work, "The Arts of Beauty", by Madame Lola Montez, Countess of Landsfield, also published in New York, in 1858, gives what is called a “classical synopsis of female beauty," attributed to Felibien. This is most dogmatic and particular, declaring, for instance:
"The hair should be either black, bright brown, or auburn; not thin, but full and waving, and if it falls in moderate curls the better—the black is particularly useful in setting off the whiteness of the neck and skin.
"The eyes black, chestnut, or blue.
"The eyebrows well divided, full, semi-circular, and broader in the middle than at the ends, of a neat turn but not formal."
These statements are those of personal opinion, and that well-restricted. The Countess is quite clear in her opinion of beauty at the end. She says:
The world has yet allowed no higher 'mission' to woman than to be beautiful. Taken in the best meaning of that word, it may be fairly questioned if there is any higher mission for woman on earth.
There follows her discussion of the various arts employed by “my sex in the pursuit of this paramount object of a woman's life."
All such discussion as this treats solely of feminine beauty, and that not in its essentials but merely as measured by the admiration of the other sex. This standard of measurement is precisely what has so tended to exalt sex-attractiveness, and to ignore, if not distinctly injure, real human beauty.
The slightest study of the diverse customs of various races shows how arbitrarily and often how hideous, are the modifications of women's appearance demanded by the opposite sex; one simple and all-conclusive instance of which is in the artificial cultivation of mere fat; not only as among certain African tribes, where those honored by selection to become wives of the chief are confined in dark huts and fed on meal and molasses, but in far more advanced Oriental races, where the candidates for masculine favor are only less frankly imprisoned, and quite as frankly fed on fattening materials
A slight preponderance of adipose tissue appears to be one of the natural distinctions of the female of our species, useful doubtless as part of the reserve fund for motherhood; and this initial “tendency to differ" has been seized upon by the dominant male and arbitrarily increased.
Again such practices as the removal of eyebrows, the blackening of teeth among the Japanese women; the shaving of the head and adoption of a wig among Hebrew women, although only required of wives, and probably not intended so much as an improvement to beauty as a mark of ownership, are still proof of the too effective masculine influence.
A dispassionate study of highly civilized romance, and especially of amorous verse, shows the general opinion of more modern mankind. It varies, from age to age, sometimes from generation to generation— or faster; but is always there, the powerful modifying influence of masculine preference upon feminine appearance.
At no time does there appear, either among men or among the women themselves, a clear predominant recognition of the human standard, and a measuring of women by that standard, except in Ancient Greece. The survival of Greek standards of beauty, as recognized by scholars and artists, together with their absolute and scornful ignoring of people in general, is a very pretty proof of the peculiar obliquity of our mental processes. It is, in aesthetics, precisely analogous to an ethical recognition of truth, chastity, and courage as the highest virtues by a people living contentedly as lying dissolute cowards.
If the great statue from Melos is beautiful, why do we not seek to approximate her proportions?+ If she is not, why do we maintain its high position? How can we, with any faintest claim to be reasonable creatures, admire this statue, and at the same time admire the women we see about us?
The answer is not so difficult after all. The statue gives us human beauty of the highest type—that we know. It is human first, and feminine second. But what we admire in verse and prose and everyday life is merely the feminine, in such variety and to such degree as an ultra-masculine and personal taste may dictate. Always the tendency of this form of sex-selection is to magnify essential differences. If the female hand and foot are slightly smaller in proportion, more delicate in build, let this smallness and delicacy be accentuated, exaggerated — caricatured, even — to please the other sex.
As an error of beauty, already given as an error in mechanics, let us study the effect of this masculine taste on the feet of women.
The hand is preferred small, white, with slender tapering fingers; but the hand has never been as absolutely deformed as the foot because of its more obvious and varied uses. Even in China, where the foot of woman was utterly sacrificed, the hand survived, the human advantage of use was greater than the sex advantage of disuse.
But in the foot this power of sex-selection triumphed to the extent of absolute deformity. As a mechanical error it is undeniable; as a physical injury it is undeniable; as an injury to beauty it is undeniable. As a specially designed machine for a special use, the beauty of a foot is inextricably connected with that use. No ship could be beautiful the lines and general structure of which prevented her from sailing. Whenever we study applied beauty, we must measure by the uses of the object to which the term is applied.
How flat and stupid it seems to repeat a statement so obvious, so incontrovertible. If a hand is so crippled that it cannot grasp, hold and otherwise perform its functions, it is not beautiful. In proportion as its natural powers are limited, so is its beauty. We might mould it into the shape of a heart, or a diamond; we might varnish it, fix lumps or horns or tassels on it. We might make it into an object conceivably beautiful as a mantel ornament, or for hat-trimming; but it would not be a beautiful hand unless it was a usable hand.
Surely that is plain. Yet most women, following the standards set by admiring men, consider hands as beautiful in inverse proportion to their size, strength and skill; beautiful for a bleached whiteness, a smooth softness, a tapering delicacy, all of which go to prove lack of use.
The powers of a hand being so varied and so constantly in requisition—even a lady must feed herself, and sometimes use a pen or a fan—the hand has remained partly usable; but the powers of a foot being simpler and by no means as necessary, we have restricted them to a far greater degree. The hand again remains visible, at least part of the time; while the foot we have agreed to cover completely, substituting for its own shape and color the shape and color of its shell This shell, starting its long and tortuous course of evolution as a sole-protecting sandal or a soft moccasin, has altogether forgotten its origin, and developed a technique of its own which has but the most casual connection with the fact that there is, after all, a foot inside of it. In size it must be large enough to allow of the forced insertion of the then promptly forgotten foot. In shape it must bear the general relation of being longer than it is broad—and so fastened as to stay on; but beyond that, any divigation may be allowed.
To return for a moment to the more mechanical view of the subject; we stand on two legs, and our ability to balance ourselves thereon is strengthened, first, by the length of the foot, which resists the tendency to tip forward or backward; and second, by the breadth of the foot, which resists the tendency to tip sideways. If one walks on stilts one realizes the difficulty of standing still on mere pegs. Yet the preference for small feet in women ignores the value of their just proportions; somewhat in length, preferring them short; and absolutely in width, preferring if it were possible, that they should be but an inch wide.
Naturally the foot is narrow at the heel and broad across the toes—that is the shape of a foot. But it is not the shape of a shoe. The shoe insists on being pointed in front—a thing no human foot ever was. Why do we think it beautiful to make the shell of a foot so different in shape from the poor thing inside? If we take out that crushed maltreated object we find its real beauty, as a foot, is utterly sacrificed to the adventitious acquirements of the shell. Pinched, shrunken, with deformed joints and twisted toes; purple and swollen-veined from compression, it is a thing to pity and to blush for. But the proud possessor does not pity her own injured feet, nor blush for them. She has never studied the beauty of feet; she does not know or care about it. What she does know and care about is the general standard of beauty in shoes.
There is a principle involved here, as in other articles of dress later to be considered, a principle of art if not of beauty; a principle which seems to be inherent in the action of the human mind; namely—conventionalization. We recognize the beauty of certain lines and proportions in various objects, and then, subconsciously, we add them together and get their average; we seek for a common denominator; we make, from the natural object, a conventionalized design. Lotus and acanthus, iris and honeysuckle, these and many more we have frozen and exalted into imperishable units of design. This tendency has acted steadily upon the dress of women, and even upon the modification of her living body. We have seized upon certain salient outlines and proportions; and from them projected a fixed outline, representing “woman," not pictorially, but as a conventionalized decorative design.
This accounts very largely for the divigation of the shoe; and of the shoes of women more than those of men; because, as always, the man was most influenced by the necessities of human use and the woman by the necessities of sex attraction. It was more important to the man that his feet should hold him up firmly, carrying him swiftly, accurately, and long. It was more important to the woman that her feet should command admiration and so help secure her best means of support—not physical efficiency of her own, but a competent mate. The man did not have to please the woman by the small size of his feet, but by the large size of his bank account. His feet were organs of locomotion, hers of sex attraction.
Therefore in the shoes of women the element of beauty, however falsely apprehended, entered more largely, and in treatment of the shoe as a work of art, we find its danger of conventionalization.
I have been told by a highly intelligent woman, resident of one of our Southern States, that the women there will not buy shoes above a certain “number” in size; and since their feet are unaware of this limit, shoes are misnumbered purposely to meet the demands of this market.
This is the conventional idea of “smallness," and that of narrowness and pointedness goes with it. But the most completely idealistic extreme of this tendency to conventionalize is shown in that all too familiar addition to the foot, the “French heel." Suppose you have before you in clear silhouette a human foot, covered, as with a stocking; just the curving outline of the thing. It is rather a pleasing object, though not symmetrical. It can, possibly, be combined in repetition or some grouping for purposes of design. But the eye of the artist can improve it. Consider the object, in profile. It has a convex curve above the instep. It has a concave curve below, under the arch. It has a rounded heel. At the toe it curves up a little. Let us increase these curves, at pleasure. In the matter of toes, that little up-curve of the tip of the great toe was developed—in shoes—to the girdle-fastened toes of medieval dandies. These were not, it is true, women; but neither were they the working classes. In the matter of instep we have intensified that outline as far as we might; also as to the arch beneath; but where the pencil of the designer has moved most freely, his fancy showed the most opulent play of expression, is in the heel. The rounded outline did not please. Let us then intensify, increase, add. Not backwards—for the foot must not look longer; not sideways—for the foot must not look wider. Downwards, then, perforce. Let us add a lump, a peg, a stilt. It is not very pretty. We make it higher or lower, move it inwards, slant it, curve it—ah! at last we have beauty! The pencil, following the in-curve at the ankle, the out-curve of the heel, then goes in again, farther—farther—and out again a little, at the grudgingly allowed base of this appendage. As a mere point it would really not allow the lady to stand at all; she must have at least an inch-wide thing to balance on.
So, by a perfectly natural evolution in design, we have arrived at the shape of the shining thing which stands in the shoe-shop window and is called a shoe. A slipper, a satin slipper, delicate, curved, hugging the arch beneath, gripping the toes till they are utterly forgotten in the slim point which covers them; and below instead of the unexciting slight curve of the sole of the foot, perforce, when it stands flat on the floor, we now have this languid luxuriance of graceful line, this ornamental insert between the foot and the floor, this thing we call a “heel." though it is more like a baluster or an inverted Indian club. And this we believe to be beautiful!
(To be continued)