Confidential Chats with Girls

by William Lee Howard

Don’t be a giggling girl. The practice of giggling will certainly develop those tiny skin muscles in a way to make your face show some kind of distortion.

I remember a young girl who was brought to me for her constant habit of giggling. It had grown into a habit and really looked like a case of hysteria. But because I told her mother it was a form of hysteria and should be treated as such, she became offended and took the girl elsewhere. I saw the girl, or rather woman, when she was twenty-four years of age, and recognized her by the peculiar conformation of her face. It was the face of a girl giggler. Her facial muscles had become so developed by her uncontrolled girlish habit that nothing could be done for her. I felt sorry for the young woman, for she had grown to be a very charming and estimable one, who was constantly embarrassed by an expression of contempt.

Good laughter, a hilariousness which has for its cause a real sense of humor, is beneficial to everyone. Such expression of humor gives motility to the face and develops a pleasing appearance.

Don’t swagger around in public nor attempt to thrust yourself forward. A modest girl will not let herself become prominent in public places. Dressing, acting or talking in any way to attract undue attention will soon ruin a girl’s reputation.

Now a little about corsets and a good, supple and attractive figure. I have no objections to corsets as corsets, but every physician knows only too well that a growing girl is injured beyond repair if she, at the developing stage of her life, compresses in any manner the internal organs. Really, this is about all there is to this corset question. If a woman has reached full development with lungs, ovaries, kidneys, all the pelvic organs, having had full play and room for their growth, the proper wearing of corsets will not do her harm; nay, they will do more, they will be a source of comfort to her. Moreover, such a woman will not lace too tightly because always having had full play of her lungs and other internal organs, she will be distressed if they are too tightly confined—their own needs and development send her warning when she has gone too far.

But it is sadly different with the young girl who has from fourteen years or even from sixteen years of age, worn corsets made for the full-grown woman. Every inch of a girl’s waist, all the region of the pelvis and the upper portion of her body, should be absolutely free from any pressure. Just take a little growing twig and tie a string around it. Next year you will see a deep constriction. The following years you will notice that the twig does not grow well, that the sap cannot run freely up, that when it does blossom, the blossoms are poorly nourished and lack the luster of its unconstricted companions.

Dress so that there is no pressure upon the pelvis or around the lungs. Try, when you have on one of these modern coats of armor now made for the fat or thin woman, the deep breathing exercises I have recommended. You cannot go through with the exercise.

Oh, but you say, we take off those corsets when we take the exercises. Certainly, but when you gird yourself up again and squeeze, punch and groan while getting into one of those “can’t sit down” things, you are undoing all the good the exercises have done.

Let your clothes hang from the shoulders. Shoulders were made to carry weights, the waist and the pelvis to carry and protect the greatest force in nature—the power of motherhood.

If you knew that when you grew to full development you would have to be a carrier of wood or water upon your shoulders, that this would have to be your career, would you go to work and place some constriction or in some way injure the growth of your shoulders—do something which would prevent you from doing what you were born to do?