Romantic Love and Personal Beauty / Their development, causal relations, historic and national peculiarities

by Henry T. Finck

BEAUTIFYING HYGIENE

Walking, running, and dancing are the most potent cosmetics for producing a foot beautiful in form and graceful in movement. It is possible that much walking does slightly increase the size of the foot, but not enough to become perceptible in the life of an individual; and it has been sufficiently shown that the standard of Beauty in a foot is not smallness but curved outlines, litheness, and grace of gait, these qualities being a thousand times more powerful “love-charms” than the smallest Chinese foot. Moreover, it is probable that graceful walking has no tendency to enlarge the foot as a whole, but only the great toe; and a well-developed great toe is a distinctive sign of higher evolution.

It is useless for any one to try to walk or dance gracefully in shoes which do not allow the toes to spread and act like two sets of elastic springs. One of the most curious aberrations of modern taste is the notion that the shape of the natural foot is not beautiful—that it will look better if made narrowest in front instead of widest. Even were this so, it would not pay to sacrifice all grace to a slight gain in Beauty. But it is not so. It is only habit, which blunts perception, that makes us indifferent to the ugliness of the pointed shoes in our shop-windows, or even in many cases prefer them to naturally-shaped shoes. Were we once accustomed to properly-shaped hygienic boots, in which no part of the foot is cramped, our present shoes, with their unnatural curves where there should be none, and the absence of curves where they should be (“rights and lefts”), would seem as “awful” and “horrid” as the old crinoline does to the eyes of the present generation. As Professor Flower remarks: “The fact that the excessively pointed, elongated toes of the time of Richard II., for instance, were superseded by the broad, round-toed, almost elephantine, but most comfortable shoes seen in the portraits of Henry VIII. and his contemporaries, shows that there is nothing in the former essential to the gratification of the æsthetic instincts of mankind. Each form was, doubtless, equally admired in the time of its prevalence.”

The Germans claim that it was one of their countrymen, Petrus Camper, who first called attention, about a hundred years ago, to another objectionable peculiarity of the modern shoe—its high heels—ruinous alike to comfort, grace, and health (a number of female diseases being caused by them); yet they admit that Camper’s advice was hardly heeded by the Germans, and that it therefore serves them right that quite recently the modern hygienic shoe, with low, broad heels, has been introduced in Germany as the “English form,” the English having proved themselves less obtuse and conservative in this matter.

The heel is, however, capable of still further improvement. It is not elastic like the cushion of the heel, after which it should be modelled; and Dr. Schaffer’s suggestion that an elastic mechanism should be introduced in the heel is certainly worthy of trial. Everybody knows how much more lightly, gracefully, as well as noiselessly, he can walk in rubbers than in leather shoes; and this gain is owing to the superior elasticity of the heel and the middle part of the shoe, covering the arch, which should be especially elastic. It is pleasanter to walk in a meadow than on a stone pavement; but if we wear soles that are both soft and elastic we need never walk on a hard surface; for then, as Dr. Schaffer remarks, “we have the meadow in our boots.”

As the left foot always differs considerably from the right, it is not sufficient to have one measure taken. The fact that shoemakers do take but one measure shows what clumsy bunglers most of them are. As a rule, it is easier to get a fit from a large stock of ready-made boots than at a shoemaker’s.

The stockings, as well as the shoes, often cramp and deform the foot; and Professor Flower suggests that they should never be made with pointed toes, or similar forms for both sides. Digitated stockings, however, are a nuisance, for they hamper the free and elastic action of the toes. Woollen stockings are the best both for summer and winter use. No one who has ever experienced the comfort of wearing woollen socks (and underclothes in general), will ever dream of reverting to silk, cotton, or any other material.

Soaking the feet in water in which a handful of salt has been dissolved, several times a week, is an excellent way of keeping the skin in sound condition. For perfect cleanliness it does not suffice to change the socks frequently. As the author of the Ugly Girl Papers remarks, “The time will come when we will find it as shocking to our ideas to wear out a pair of boots without putting in new lining as we think the habits of George the First’s time, when maids of honour went without washing their faces for a week, and people wore out their linen without the aid of a laundress.”

DANCING AND GRACE

Among the ancients dancing included graceful gestures and poses of all parts of the body, as well as facial expression. In Oriental dancing of the present day, likewise, graceful movements of the arms and upper part of the body play a more important rôle than the lower limbs. Modern dancing, on the contrary, is chiefly an affair of the lower extremities. It is pre-eminently an exercise of the toes; and herein lies its hygienic and beautifying value, for, as we have seen, grace of gait depends chiefly on the firm litheness and springiness of the toes, especially the great toe. By their grace of gait one can almost always distinguish persons who have enjoyed the privilege of dancing-lessons, which have strengthened their toes and, by implication, many other muscles, not forgetting those of the arm, which has to hold the partner.