SMALL-WAISTED WOMEN.
If the truth be fairly stated, women have many excuses for their infatuation regarding small waists. It is Mrs. Haweis who says, "The reason why a small waist is a beauty is because, when it is natural, it goes together with the peculiar litheness and activity of a slenderly-built figure. All the bones are small, the shoulders and arms petite, and the general look is dainty and youthful." In other words, a small waist is only a beauty when it is in proportion to the rest of the figure. The common mistake lies in considering it a beauty in a large woman of massive proportions. A few centuries ago women did not take a scientific view of things, and fell into delusions which in this age are a disgrace to the sex. They knew nothing of anatomy, of the law of proportion or of the curve of beauty, and they misunderstood the language of admiration. The latter I suspect to be at the root of the whole matter. Poets were, as we shall presently see, everlastingly praising small waists, and women fell into the error of supposing that a small waist was, in the abstract, a beauty and an attraction. When or where the mistake originated I cannot tell, but here are the words of praise of probably a fourteenth-century lover: "Middel heo hath menskful smal," or, "She hath a graceful small waist." At a later day Master Wither included in the attractions of her who had left him,
Her wast exceeding small,
The fives did fit her shoo;
But now, alasse! sh'as left me.
This suits exactly the modern view of a small waist and a No. 5 shoe.
In the well-known Scotch ballad "Edom o' Gordon" the Lady Rodes is represented as being shut up by Gordon in her burning castle. The smoke was suffocating when,
Oh than bespaik her dochter dear:
She was baith jimp and sma', etc.
Here it might be said that the evident youth of the girl, who was dropped over the wall and fell on the point of the cruel Gordon's spear, accounts for her being "jimp and sma'." The explanation will not apply to "The Cruel Sister," as given by Sir Walter Scott:
She took her by the middle sma',
Binnorie, O Binnorie!
So fascinated was the rhymer by that special feature of her beauty that he returns to it after recounting how the elder sister drowned the younger:
You could not see her middle sma',
Binnorie, O Binnorie!
Her gouden girdle was so bra,
By the bonny milldams of Binnorie.
Another instance is in the opening verse of Sir Walter Scott's version of "The Lass of Lochroyan:"
Oh wha will shoe my bonny foot?
And wha will glove my hand?
And wha will lace my middle jimp
Wi' a lang, lang linen band?
The last line appears to indicate the use of a linen band, as the Roman ladies used the strophium, a broad ribbon tied round the breast as a support. From this it may be inferred that the "Lass of Lochroyan" did not owe her "middle jimp" to any very deadly artificial means of compression.
One of the most remarkable instances that can be adduced is in the original version of "Annie Laurie," by William Douglas, a Scottish poet of the seventeenth century. It has been so completely displaced by a later version that few are probably acquainted with the song as written by Douglas:
She's backit like a peacock,
She's breisted like a swan,
She's jimp about the middle,
Her waist ye weel micht span;
Her waist ye weel micht span,
And she has a rolling ee, etc.
In view of all these passages is there any wonder that it is hard to persuade women that men do not admire "wasp" waists? How are they to know that the "jimp middle" of the ballads was in its jimpness in proportion to the shoulders? The trouble is, that the early rhymesters have used up the only side of the question capable of poetical treatment. One cannot sing of the reverse: no poet could seriously lift up his voice in praise of her "ample waist" or "graceful portliness." In order to reach woman's ear, modern writers must adopt a different course, and it is curious to contrast their utterances with those of the ballad-makers. Place Charles Reade by the side of Douglas, and then what becomes of the "waist ye weel micht span"? After showing how the liver, lungs, heart, stomach and spleen are packed by Nature, the novelist asks: "Is it a small thing for the creature (who uses a corset) to say to her Creator, 'I can pack all this egg-china better than you can,' and thereupon to jam all those vital organs close by a powerful, a very powerful, and ingenious machine?"
Every lady should read A Simpleton, and learn something of the monstrous wrong she inflicts upon herself by trying to compass an artificially-produced "middle sae jimp." It will prepare her for Mrs. Haweis's lessons upon The Art of Beauty. One or two passages will give a hint of their flavor: "Nothing is so ugly as a pinched waist: it puts the hips and shoulders invariably out of proportion in width.... In deforming the waist almost all the vital organs are affected by the pressure, and the ribs are pushed out of their proper place." "Tight-lacing is ugly, because it distorts the natural lines of the figure, and gives an appearance of uncertainty and unsafeness.... Men seldom take to wife a girl who has too small a waist, whether natural or artificial." "In architecture, a pillar or support of any kind is called debased and bad in art if what is supported be too heavy for the thing supporting, and if a base be abnormally heavy and large for what it upholds. The laws of proportion and balance must be understood. In a waist of fifteen inches both are destroyed, and the corresponding effect is unpleasant to the eye. The curve of the waist is coarse and immoderate, utterly opposed to what Ruskin has shown to be beauty in a curve. Real or artificial, such a waist is always ugly: if real, it is a deformity that should be disguised; if artificial, it is culpable, and nasty to boot."
No rhyming can withstand such reasoning. If the ballads really had any effect in fostering an admiration of abnormally small waists, both science and a truer conception of beauty should by this time have counteracted their influence. Women cannot much longer, with decency, plead ignorance of the results of a practice which would be ridiculous were it less pernicious.
J.J.