CORPULENCE AND LEANNESS
Many women consider the corset necessary as a figure-improver, especially if they suffer from excessive fatness. They will be surprised to hear that the corset is one of the principal causes of their corpulence. Says Professor M. Williams: “There is one horror which no lady can bear to contemplate, viz. fat. What is fat? It is an accumulation of unburnt body-fuse. How can we get rid of it when accumulated in excess? Simply by burning it away—this burning being done by means of the oxygen inhaled by the lungs. If, as Mr. Lennox Browne has shown, a lady with normal lung capacity of 125 cubic inches, reduces this to 78 inches by means of her stays, and attains 118 inches all at once on leaving them off, it is certain that her prospects of becoming fat and flabby as she advances towards middle age are greatly increased by tight lacing, and the consequent suppression of natural respiration.”
Thus corpulence may be put down as a sixth—or rather seventh—æsthetic disadvantage resulting from the use of corsets.
The reason why women, although inferior to men in muscular development, have softer and rounder forms, is because there is a greater natural tendency in women than in men towards the accumulation of fatty tissue under the skin. The least excess of this adipose tissue is, however, as fatal as emaciation to that admiration of Personal Beauty which constitutes the essence of Love. Leanness repels the æsthetico-amorous sense because it obliterates the round contours of beauty, exposes the sinews and bones, and thus suggests old age and disease. Corpulence repels it because it destroys all delicacy of form, all grace of movement, and in its exaggerated forms may indeed be looked upon as a real disease imperatively calling for medical treatment; as Dr. Oscar Maas shows most clearly and concisely in his pamphlet on the “Schwenninger Cure,” which should be read by all who suffer from obesity.
Although the very “father of medicine,” Hippokrates, studied the subject of corpulence, and formulated rules for curing it, doctors still disagree regarding some of the details of its treatment. Some forbid all fatty food, others prescribe it in small quantities, and Dr. Ebstein specially recommends fat viands and sauces as preventives; but the preponderance of the best medical opinion is against him. Dr. Say recommends the drinking of very large quantities of tea, while Professor Oertel urges the diminution of fluids in the body, first by drinking little, and secondly by inducing copious perspiration, either artificially (by hot air and steam baths, etc.), or, what is much better, by brisk daily exercise. Dr. Schwenninger, who secured so much fame by reducing Bismarck’s weight about 40 pounds, forbids the taking of liquids during or within an hour or two of meal-time; in other words, he counsels his patients not to eat and drink at the same time.
On the two most important points all authorities are practically agreed. They are that the patient must avoid food which contains large quantities of starch and sugar (such as cake, pastry, potatoes, bread, pudding, honey, syrup, etc.); and secondly, that he must take as much exercise as possible in the open air, because during walking the bodily fat is consumed as fuel, to keep the machine going.
The notorious Mr. Banting, who reduced his weight in a year from 202 to 150 pounds, “lived on beef, mutton, fish, bacon, dry toast and biscuit, poultry, game, tea, coffee, claret, and sherry in small quantities, and a night-cap of gin, whisky, brandy, or wine. He abstained from the following articles: pork, veal, salmon, eels, herrings, sugar, milk, and all sorts of vegetables grown underground, and nearly all fatty and farinaceous substances. He daily drank 43 ounces of liquids. On this diet he kept himself for seven years at 150 pounds. He found, what other experience confirms, that sugar was the most powerful of all fatteners” (Dr. G. M. Beard, in Eating and Drinking, a most entertaining and useful little volume).
Lean persons wishing to increase their weight need only reverse the directions here given as regards the choice or avoidance of certain articles of food. Not so, however, with regard to exercise. If you wish to reduce your corpulence, take exercise; if you wish to increase your weight, again take exercise. The apparent paradox lurking in this rule is easily explained. If you are too fat and walk a great deal, you burn up the superfluous fat and lose weight. If you are too lean and walk a great deal you increase the bulk of your muscles, and thus gain weight. Moreover, you greatly stimulate your appetite, and become able to eat larger quantities of sweet and starchy food—more than enough to counteract the wear and tear caused by the exercise.
Muscle is the plastic material of beauty. Fat should only be present in sufficient quantity to prevent the irregular outlines of the muscles from being too conspicuously indicated, at the expense of rounded smoothness. What the ancient Greeks thought on this subject is vividly shown in the following remarks by Dr. Maas: “According to the unanimous testimony of Thukydides, Plato, Xenophon, the gymnastic exercises to which the Greeks were so passionately addicted, and which constituted, as is well known, a very essential part of the public education of the young, had for their avowed object the prevention of undue corpulence, since an excessive paunch did not only offend the highly-developed æsthetic sense of this talented nation, but was justly regarded as an impediment to bodily activity. In order, therefore, to make the youths not only beautiful, but also vigorous and able to resist hardship, and thus more capable of serving their country, they were, from their childhood, and uninterruptedly, exercised daily in running, wrestling, throwing the discus, etc.; so that the prevention of corpulence was practically raised to a formal state-maxim, and as such enforced occasionally with unyielding persistence.”
The ruinous consequences of an exaggerated abdomen to the harmonious proportions of the body, and to grace of attitude and gait, are so universally known that it would be superfluous to apply any of our negative tests of Beauty—such as the facts that apes and savages are commonly characterised by protuberant bellies, and that intemperance and gluttony have the same disastrous effect on Personal Beauty. In civilised communities, indolence and beer-drinking are the chief causes predisposing to corpulence. In Bavaria, where enormous quantities of beer are consumed, almost all the men are deformed by obesity; but in other countries, as a rule, women suffer more from this anomaly than men, because they lead a less active life.
It may be stated as a general rule that girls under eighteen are too slight and women over thirty too heavy—"fat and forty." This calamity is commonly looked on as one of the inevitable dispensations of Providence, whereas it is simply a result of indolence and ignorance. With a little care in dieting, and two or three hours a day devoted to walking, rowing, tennis, swimming, dancing, etc., any young lady can add ten to fifteen pounds to her weight in one summer, or reduce it by that amount, as may be desired. But as the consumption of enormous quantities of fresh air by the unimprisoned lungs is the absolute condition of success in this beautifying process, it is useless to attempt it without laying aside the corset.
The plea that corsets are needed to hold up the heavy clothing is of no moment. Women, like men, should wear their clothing suspended from the shoulder, which is a great deal more conducive to health, comfort, and gracefulness than the clumsy fashion of attaching everything to the waist.
Still less weight can be attached to the monstrous argument that women need stays for support. What an insulting proposition to assert that civilised woman is so imperfectly constructed that she alone of all created beings needs artificial surgical support to keep her body in position! If there are any women so very corpulent or so very lean that they need a corset as a figure-improver or a support, then let them have it for heaven’s sake, and look upon themselves as subjects ripe for medical treatment. What is objected to here is that strong, healthy, well-shaped girls should deform themselves deliberately by wearing tight, unshapely corsets, rankly offensive to the æsthetic sense.