The ugly-girl papers

by S. D. Power

The first thing is the hardest—to stand straight. Most people are satisfied indeed to attain this point of physical and polite culture, and never get beyond it. Erect stiffness is better than crookedness. To be admirable, the figure must be perfectly flat in the shoulders. No projecting shoulder-blades, no curves are allowed here, however pleasing they may be elsewhere. A stout figure can hardly be unrefined if it is flat behind. A pair of inelastic shoulder-braces must be called into requisition; and these should be made of coutille, or satin jean, two inches wide, and corded at the edge. Make them barely long enough to reach the belt of the skirts worn, and button on them. Set the shoulders perfectly flat against the wall, and find the distance between their blades; fasten a broad strap the same length—not more than two inches, very likely—by sewing it to the straps behind even with the lower edge of the scapula. This is the best, as well as the cheapest shoulder-brace to be found. If well proportioned, and all the measure taken scant, it can not fail to draw the shoulders into place. Excellent teachers of physical training say that the will alone should be used to force one’s self to stand straight. This is true of a person in perfect health. But round shoulders often result from weakness or sedentary pursuits, against whose influence it is useless to struggle; and I would not debar any half-invalid from the luxury of the support given by a strict pair of braces. They relieve the heart and lungs by throwing the weight of the chest on the back, where it belongs, instead of crowding it down on the breast. To correct the ugly rise of the shoulders which always accompanies curvature, and sometimes exists without it, weights must be used. Nothing is more unfeminine than the straight line of shoulder, which properly belongs to a cuirassier or an athlete. Some mothers make their young folks walk the floor with a pail of water in each hand, to give their shoulders a graceful droop. A substitute may be worn in one’s room while at work, in the shape of an outside brace of triple gray linen, having two extra straps buckling round the tip of each shoulder, one long end reaching the belt, with a wedge-shaped lead or iron weight hooked on it. This is heroic practice, but effectual; and its pains are amply compensated by lines of figure which are the surest exponents of high breeding.

The position of the feet is not to be neglected in the lesson of standing. The toes should be widely turned out, to balance well; and if the foot is inclined to turn in, this may be remedied by having the boot heels made higher on the inside. This will throw the foot into a position to develop the arched instep. A crooked leg is a matter for surgical treatment; and in these days of curative ingenuity, with steel braces it will be but the work of a few months to bring the most awkward limb into shape. Those who have seen the wonders wrought with deformed children who have crooked limbs and bodies will consider it a simple matter to bring a partial disfiguration under control. As to the size of the feet, sensible people will never be persuaded that any degree of pressure which can be borne without suffering is injurious. Nature knows how to protect herself. A clever old shoe-dealer gave as his experience that people who always wear tight shoes never have corns. It is the alternation of tight and loose shoes that gives rise to these torments.

The great-toe joint ought not to project beyond the line of the foot. I know a zealous young girl who regularly screwed her bare foot up in a linen bandage before going to bed, to keep it in shape. For painful swelling of the feet in warm weather, no remedy is as effectual as an ice-cold foot-bath for five minutes in the evening or when they are most troublesome. This, however, must never be taken without first wetting the head plentifully with ice-water, and keeping a cold bandage on it all the while. It is good to soak the feet for fifteen minutes in warm water at least twice a week. This keeps them elastic, and in delicate, pliant condition.

An elegant carriage is the patent of nature’s nobility, and appears of itself when the body is held into proper attitudes, and made properly elastic by exercise. The great cause of all stiffness is want of exertion—a general rustiness of all the limbs. To the slender child of the South the climate supplies a degree of relaxation and suppleness which dispenses with the need of action. The women of South American colonies seldom walk for exercise, yet their movements are full of grace. The stimulus of thorough circulation, so potent and softening, can only be gained in our colder latitude by exertion. A lazy woman may be picturesque in a room or in a carriage, but never on foot. Americans have one-sided ideas of grace in walking. A woman as straight as a dart, who moves without any perceptible movement of the hips or limbs, is considered an excellent walker. But this unvarying rectitude is far from the poetry of motion. Watch the slight balancement of a graceful French woman, and you will see an ease, a spontaneity, and variety of motion which set the former by comparison in the light of a bodkin out for a “constitutional.” A fine walk is an affair of proper balance.

A clever friend, who has spent more time in the study of women’s ways and manners in different countries than one can think profitable, has some unique views on the subject of their walking. He says the haughty women of Old Spain carry their weight mainly on the hips, which gives an indescribable stiffness of demeanor. Americans do the same, throwing the weight a little more on the thigh, without bending the knee. French women carry the weight on the calf of the leg, and the knee bends very much at each step, while the body is carried with the least balancement of the shoulders, and the head, so far from being held like a cockade, or the head of tongs, is easy. La tête dégagée, les épaules tombante is the rule for a good style. Try the difference of contracting the muscles in the calf of the leg in walking, with the knee bent sensibly at each step. The body involuntarily throws itself back, and a lightness of motion is the result, which is impossible with the usual swing of the leg from the hips in the stiff walk of Saxon women. The same authority says that the far-famed serpentine glide of the creole, which travelers admire and vainly try to describe, comes from a peculiar movement of the hips. The weight of the figure is thrown on the loins, and half of the body moves alternately at each step, not in a wriggle, as it is caricatured at the North, but with a soft turn of the shoulders corresponding, and a smoothness which betrays the sensuous temperament and luxurious physique. Such is the walk of the women of Venezuela, Bogota, and La Plata. Such a gait, however, would hardly be accepted in the Champs Elysées as suggestive of high refinement. The women of Alabama and Georgia have traits enough of this walk to make them among the most graceful in the world, as far as carriage goes. The creoles of the Gulf have this sinuous glide, betraying a flexibility of limb which we can scarcely imagine. To gain this pliancy, twisting movements of gymnastics are especially suitable. Gyrations of each limb, the head and body, produce, in a few weeks’ practice, an enviable degree of elasticity, which gives the carriage something more than the up and down, forward and back, straight lines of motion with which ladies ordinarily favor us. A smooth, long step, the weight of the body on the loins, where nature intended it should be, and the legs propelled from thence, without stiffness at the knee or obtrusive motion of the hips, is, probably, the ideal of walking; such as one finds both in a highly trained woman and in the untaught perfection of a South Sea Islander.

I have spoken at length on the topic of walking, because its importance as an art of grace can not be overrated, and because it has a still deeper bearing on women’s health. The training which secures an elegant carriage is precisely that which counteracts the tendency to a dozen fatal relaxations at different points of the frame, and prevents their appearance. No one ought to say that walking brings on the disorders which blanch and wither feminine life. The cause is the fatal, inherited weakness of constitution, shown by either undue redness or pallor, by indolence or excitability, which is a slow decay from its first breath, and poisons the hopes and the loveliness of so many women. These doomed beings must work out their own salvation, and make themselves anew in the effort. The weaknesses would develop whether they walked or not. The care should be to adjust exercise and nourishment, stimulus and rest, in due proportion. But the weak woman must have separate counsel, for she by no means comes under the head of these unpremeditated consultations.

CHAPTER IV.

N. P. Willis as a Critic of Beauty.—The Perfume of the Presence.—Charm of Good Circulation.—Chills are Incipient Congestion.—Paper Clothing.—Luxuries of the Bath.—A Substitute for Sea-Baths.—To Secure Fragrant Breath.—Delicate Dentifrices.—Fine Cologne.—A List of Fragrance.

When Willis died, American society lost its great personal critic. No other writer shows such insight into the subtile elements of women’s beauty, or speaks so assuredly on points of mere outward attraction. That gentle and gracious critic who blesses the order of Old Bachelors dissects feminine manner with zest, but is not given to that mention of ear-locks and finger-tips which made “People I have Met” such a conserve of hints for the dressing-table. It is a pity such a connoisseur of feminine graces could not have taken half a hundred distinguished specimens into his training to show the world such women as fill the ideal of a refined man of the world. Willis was susceptible to beauty wherever he found it: a perfect ear on the head of a plain country girl would not miss the glance of this artist, and he betrays what single charms may rivet the regard of a man of taste a dozen times in those glorious sketches we never hope to see excelled.

You remember one of his heroines was remarkable for the perfume which exhaled from her person. We are not to suppose that this most fascinating gift was due to Coudray’s sachets, or to hedyosima on her hair. From repeated experience, verified by that of very discerning and sensitive persons, it is affirmed that certain people of fine organism and perfect health have a fragrance belonging to their presence like scent to a flower. One of the most powerful feminine novelists of the day said that she always knew when a favorite brother had been in a room by the slight indefinable perfume that followed him. His pillow breathed it, and his easy-chair, and it was perceived even by comparative strangers. I have known persons innocent of using perfume, whose fragrant presence was recognized by every one who came near them. In all cases this was accompanied by a bodily condition of perfect health and much magnetic attraction. This may be named the first in that list of subtile personal properties which constitute the strongest and most enduring of physical charms, and which are not discussed with any proportion to their potency. We do not stop to ask what pleases us; refinement attracts, sweetness detains us, and we are only too glad to lie under the spell.