Fortunately, the negro’s taste is not sufficiently refined to make him feel the æsthetic inferiority of the ebony complexion imposed on him by his climate. Wherein this æsthetic inferiority consists is graphically pointed out in these words of Figuier: “The colour of the skin takes away all charm from the negro’s countenance. What renders the European’s face pleasing is that each of its features exhibits a particular shade. The cheeks, forehead, nose, and chin of the white have each a different tinge. On an African visage, on the contrary, all is black, even the eyebrows, as inky as the rest, are merged in the general colour; scarcely another shade is perceptible, except at the line where the lips join each other.”
Nor is this all. Not only do we look in vain, in the monotonous blackness of the negro’s face, for those varied tints which adorn a white maiden’s face, borrowing one another’s charms by insensible gradations, but also for those subtle emotional changes which, even if they existed in the negro’s mind, could not paint themselves so delicately on his opaque countenance, betraying every acceleration or retardation in the heart’s beats, indicating every nuance of hope and despair, of pleasure or anguish.
In our own latitude, luckily, Natural Selection favours, in the manner indicated, the survival of the translucent white complexion. And what Natural Selection leaves undone, Sexual Selection completes. Romantic Love is the great awakener of the sense of Beauty, and in proportion as Love is developed and unimpeded in its action, does the complexion become more beautiful and more appreciated. Savages, blind to the delicate tints of a transparent skin, daub themselves all over with mixtures of grease and paint. The women of ancient Greece had taste enough to feel the ugliness of the pallor caused by being constantly chaperoned and locked up, but not enough to know that no artificial paint can ever replace the natural colour of health. Hence, as Becker tells us, “painting was almost universal among Grecian women.” Perhaps they did not use any rouge at home, but it “was resumed when they were going out, or wished to be specially attractive.” The men, apparently, had better taste, for we read that “Ischomachos counselled his young wife to take exercise, that she might do without rouge, which she was accustomed constantly to use.”
Coming to more recent times, we find men still protesting in vain against the feminine fashion of bedaubing the face with vulgar paint. More than two centuries ago La Bruyère informed his countrywomen pointedly that “If it is the men they desire to please, if it is for them that they paint and stain themselves, I have collected their opinions, and I assure them, in the name of all or most men, that the white and red paint renders them frightful and disgusting; that the red alone makes them appear old and artificial; that men hate as much to see them with cherry in their faces, as with false teeth in their mouth and lumps of wax in the jaws.”
It is needless to say that women who paint their faces put themselves on a level with savages; for they show thereby that they prefer hideous opaque daubs to the charm of translucent facial tints. Masculine protestation, combined with masculine amorous preference for pure complexions, has at last succeeded in banishing paint from the boudoir of the most refined ladies; and this, combined with compulsory vaccination against smallpox, accounts for the increasing number of good complexions in the world.
But, the important question now confronts us, Is there no limit to the evolution of whiteness of complexion? Will Sexual Selection continue to favour the lighter shades until the hyperbolic “milk and blood” complexion will have been universally realised?
An emphatic “No”[“No”] is the answer. An exaggerated white is as objectionable as black,—more so, in fact, because, whereas the deepest black indicates good health, extreme whiteness suggests the pallor of ill-health, and will therefore always displease Cupid, the supreme judge of Personal Beauty. Moreover, in a very white face the red cheek suggests the confusing blush or the hectic flush rather than the subtle tints of health and normal emotion. And again, the Scandinavian rose-and-lily complexion is inferior to the delicate and slightly-veiled tint of the Spanish brunette, because the latter suggests the mellowing action of the sun’s rays, which promises more permanence of beauty. Hence it is that in the marriage market a decided preference is shown for the brunette type, as we shall see in the chapter on Blondes and Brunettes.
COSMETIC HINTS
We are now in a position to understand the extreme importance of the complexion from an amorous point of view, and to see why the care of the complexion has almost monopolised the attention of those desiring to improve their personal appearance, as shown by the fact that the word “cosmetic,” in common parlance, refers to the care of the skin alone.
Books containing recipes for skin lotions, ointments, and powders are so numerous, that it is not worth while to devote much space to the matter here. As a rule, the best advice to those about to use cosmetics is Don’t. Every man whose admiration is worth having will infinitely prefer a freckled, or even a pallid or smallpox-marked, face to one showing traces of powder or greasy ointments, or lifeless, cadaverous enamel, opaque as ebony blackness.