WOMEN MAY ALL BE BEAUTIFUL
Nothing is more difficult to define than beauty. It is not something absolute, like truth; it differs according to times, countries, races, and individual tastes. Greek beauty is not Parisian beauty, English beauty is pretty well the opposite of Italian beauty.
A European beauty might strike a Chinaman as very ugly, and a Chinese beauty would find no admirer in Europe, except, perhaps, among blasé people with the most fastidious tastes and ever in search of novelty.
The Buddha of the Hindoos has nothing in common with the Jupiter of the Greeks. Ancient art differs entirely from modern art.
In Antiquity, beauty consists in the harmony of the proportions, the purity of the lines, the nobility of form and attitude, the sobriety of the figure, and the coldness of the expression. In modern times, beauty consists in gracefulness, piquancy, intelligence, sentiment, vivacity, and exuberance of form.
But there are two kinds of beauty in women: that which is natural to them, and that which they can acquire by carefully studying what suits them best to wear, and how they can use to advantage their style of face and figure.
I have seen women absolutely transformed by the hands of a skilful dressmaker or a clever hairdresser.
The natural beauty is that happy ensemble of lines and expression which attract and charm the eyes. It is not at all indispensable that this ensemble should be harmonious. On the contrary, contrasts are often less cold and monotonous than perfect harmony, and the statuesque beauty generally leaves us unmoved.
The woman who looks amiable and cheerful is naturally beautiful—far more so than a woman with irreproachable sculptural outlines and features so regular that she makes you wish she had some redeeming defect or other. Perfection was attractive in ancient Greece; it is not now.
Perfection seldom looks amiable and bright, and modern beauty must look intelligent—brilliant even. Ancient Greece would not have looked at a turned-up nose; but such a nose denotes gaiety, wit, spirit of repartee, and we like it.