A French writer indeed says: “Most of our fashionables are extremely slender; they have constituted this an essential to beauty; leanness is in France necessary to the air élégant.” It must be remembered, however, that the vital system—that which we have just said is peculiarly the system of woman—is, in its most beautiful parts, peculiarly defective in France; and that, owing in a great measure to that circumstance, the women of France are among the ugliest in Europe.—But of that in its proper place.
First Variety or Modification of this Species of Beauty.
It may here be observed, that the varieties of beauty of the locomotive system, and also those of beauty of the mental system, are easily explicable, because these systems are, in some respects, more limited and simple. The varieties of beauty of the vital system are, on the contrary, more difficult of explanation, because that system is, in some respects, more diffused and complicated.
Even the preparatory vital organs and functions differ somewhat in the two sexes.
Woman has frequently a smaller number of molar teeth than man; those called wisdom teeth not always appearing. Mastication is also less energetic in woman.
The stomach, in woman, is much smaller; the appetite for food is less; hunger does not appear to press her so imperiously; and her consumption of food is much less considerable.[36] Hence, indubitable cases of long abstinence from food, have generally occurred in females.
In the choice and the preference of certain aliments, woman also differs much from man. In general, women prefer light and agreeable food, which flatters the palate by its perfume and its savor. Their appetites are also much more varied.
Women, whom vicious habits have not depraved, use also beverages less abundantly than men. Fermented, vinous, and spirituous beverages are indeed used only by the monsters engendered in the corruptions of towns—amid the insane dissipation of the rich, or the wretched and pitiable suffering of the poor; and both are then brought to one humiliating level, marked by the red and pimpled, or the pallid face, the swimming eye, the haggard features, the pestilential breath. The scarf-skin in these cases divides all that may be worthy from all that is utterly worthless: the worthy part may be external to the cuticle, in substantial, though polluted clothing; the worthless is the yet living portion, which, whether called body or soul, is no longer worth picking off a dunghill.[37]
Digestion in woman is made, however, with great rapidity; and the whole canal interested in that process, possesses great irritability.
The absorbent vessels in woman are much more developed, and seem to enjoy a more active vitality. The circumstances of pregnancy and suckling, appear also to augment the energy of these vessels.