Our Girls

by Dio Lewis

THIS DRESS CHECKS YOUR MOVEMENTS.

Secondly, with that wasp waist, your lungs, stomach, liver, and other organs squeezed down out of their place, and into one half their natural size, and with that long trail dragging on the ground, how can any man of sense, who knows that life is made up of use, of service, of work; how can he take such partner? He must be desperate to unite himself for life with such a deformed, fettered, half breathing ornament.

If I were in the matrimonial market, I might marry a woman that had but one arm, or one eye, or no eyes at all, if she suited me otherwise; but so long as God permitted me to retain my senses, I could never join my fortunes with those of a woman with a small waist.

A small waist! I am a physiologist, and know what a small waist means. It means the organs of the abdomen jammed down into the pelvis; it means the organs of the chest stuffed up into the throat; it means a weak back; it means a delicate, nervous invalid; it means a suffering patient, and not a vigorous helpmate.

Thousands of men dare not venture, because they wisely fear that, instead of a helpmate, they will get an invalid to take care of. Besides, this bad health in you, just as in men, made the mind, as well as the body, faddled and effeminate.

You have no power, no magnetism. I know you giggle freely, and use big words, such as splendid, awful, etc.; but then, this does not deceive us; we see through all that sort of thing. The fact is, you are superficial, affected, silly. You have none of that womanly strength and warmth which are so assuring and attractive to men.

Why you have actually become so childish, that you refuse to wear decent names even, and insist upon little baby names.

Instead of Helen, Margaret and Elizabeth you affect Nellie, Maggie and Lizzie.

When your brothers were babies, you called them Bobbie, Dickie and Johnnie; but when they grow up to manhood, no more of that silly trash, if you please.

I know a woman, twenty-five years old, and as big as both my grandmothers put together, who insists upon being called Kittie, and her real name is Catherine; her brain is big enough to conduct affairs of State, she does nothing but giggle, cover up her face with her fan, and exclaim, "Don't now, you are real mean." How can a sensible man propose a life partnership to such a silly goose?

My dear girls, if you would get husbands, and sensible ones, dress in plain, neat, becoming garments, and talk like sensible, earnest sisters.

You say you don't care, you won't dress to please men, etc. Then, as I said in opening this sermon, I am not speaking to you. I am speaking to such girls as want husbands, and would like to know how to get them.

You say that the most sensible men are crazy after these butterflies of fashion. I beg your pardon, it is not so. Occasionally, even a brilliant man may marry a silly, weak woman. But to say, as I have heard women say a hundred times, that the most sensible men marry women without sense, is simply absurd. Nineteen times in twenty sensible men choose sensible women.

I grant you that in company men are very likely to gabble and toy with these over-dressed and forward creatures; but as to going to the altar with them, they beg to be excused.

Thirdly, among the men in the matrimonial market, only a very small number are rich; and in America very rarely make good husbands. But the number of those who are beginning in life, who are filled with a noble ambition, who have a future, is very large. These are worth having. But such will not, they dare not, ask you to join them, while they see you so idle, silly, and so gorgeously attired.

Let them see that you are industrious, economical, with habits that secure health and strength, that your life is earnest and real, that you are willing to begin at the beginning in life with the man you would consent to marry, then marriage will become the rule, and not as now, among certain classes, the exception.

Ah, if ever the time shall come, when young women have occupations, and can sustain a healthy, dignified attitude toward men,—if ever the time shall come when women are not such pitiful dependents, then marriage will become universal, and we shall all be happier, better, nobler.

I hear some plucky, spirited young woman exclaiming:—

"This is all very well. No doubt your sermon, as you call it, contains a good deal of truth; but how about these young men who spend their time drinking, smoking, loafing about club-houses, and running after strange women? I suppose you think they are perfect angels."

My dear friend, have I said anything in this sermon, or do I say anything in this book, which leads you to suppose that I think men better than women?

It is because I believe that, in the constitution of the race, you are the fountain-head of social, moral and religious influence, that I come directly to you.

My mother taught me, long ago, the great moral superiority of woman. She taught me that most of the good and pure in this world comes from woman.

So far from thinking that man is an angel, and woman a nothing, and a bad nothing, the strongest article in my religious creed is, that when woman has been redeemed from the shilly-shally, lace, ribbon, and feather life, into which she has so unhappily drifted,—when woman shall be restored to herself, she will be strong enough in soul to take us men in her arms, and carry us to heaven.

I beg you will not suppose that, in my criticisms upon woman, I am prompted by the belief that she needs special exhortation on her own account. I appeal to her on account of us all, believing that the most direct and effective way to redeem the race, is to induce woman to lay aside every weight and the special sins that so beset her, and to run the race with the highest womanly heroism.