“Well, my friend,” I replied, “I think you are speaking of them like a jealous artist; you object to them because, with very limited skill, by the exhibition of their bodies flying through the air they attract as much applause as you do with all your artistic dexterity. It is not personal dislike in your case, as you seem to think—it is trade jealousy.”
At this Alphonse interposed.
“Adolph is right,” he answered. “Women are badly made. A woman is not an object of art, but of use. Look at her hips—how they exceed the falling line of the shoulders, crush the short legs and destroy all proportion by their excessive width. This defect requires concealment by some drapery, [p269] and should prohibit the exhibition of the nude. On the other hand the strength of the body, which in a woman lies in her hips, a man carries in his shoulders. Atlas bears the weight of the world upon his neck. Get up, Adolph, and show us your back.”
His friend was smoking, but he quietly laid down his cigarette, and took off his shirt. Alphonse looked at him for an instant, admiring him with the enjoyment of an artist, a smile on his lips.
“You can put that fellow,” he said, “into the ideal oval of the egg upon which Greek sculpture has inscribed the hermaphrodite, and you will see whether his shoulders destroy the classic lines of sexless beauty.” I have often heard these æsthetic truths expressed by other trapeze artists more coarsely and with less appreciation of art. [p270]
After an interval of some centuries, the life of the gymnasium has revived the customs which astonish modern readers in the Banquet. This surprise is unworthy of philosophers. It is logical that throughout all ages the same causes should produce the same effects. The woman of antiquity remained in the gynæceum, and she was rarely seen by the outer world.
Woman is banished from modern gymnasiums by her natural destination of wife, mother, and nurse.