Part 44

The plea that corsets are needed to hold up the heavy clothing is of no moment. Women, like men, should wear their clothing suspended from the shoulder, which is a great deal more conducive to health, comfort, and gracefulness than the clumsy fashion of attaching everything to the waist.

Still less weight can be attached to the monstrous argument that women need stays for support. What an insulting proposition to assert that civilised woman is so imperfectly constructed that she alone of all created beings needs artificial surgical support to keep her body in position! If there are any women so very corpulent or so very lean that they need a corset as a figure-improver or a support, then let them have it for heaven’s sake, and look upon themselves as subjects ripe for medical treatment. What is objected to here is that strong, healthy, well-shaped girls should deform themselves deliberately by wearing tight, unshapely corsets, rankly offensive to the æsthetic sense.

THE FASHION FETISH ANALYSED

Once more the question must be asked, “Why do women wear such hideous things as crinolines, bustles, and corsets, so universally abhorred by men?” Is it because they are inferior to men in æsthetic taste? Is Schopenhauer right when he says that “women are and remain, on the whole, the most absolute and incurable Philistines?” They are deficient in objectivity, he adds: “hence they have no real intelligence or appreciation for music or poetry, or the plastic arts; and if they make any pretences of this sort, it is only apish affectation to gratify their vanity. Hence it would be more correct to call them the _unæsthetic_ than the beautiful sex.”

The pessimistic woman-hater no doubt exaggerates. Yet—without alluding to the paucity of women who have distinguished themselves in the fine arts—is it credible that the average woman would so readily submit to a repulsive fashion like the bustle, or a hat “adorned” with the corpse of a murdered bird, if she had even a trace of æsthetic feeling? If women had the refined æsthetic taste with which they are commonly credited, is it conceivable that they would voluntarily adopt the African bustle, because fashionable, in preference to a more becoming style? Have you ever heard that a person of acknowledged musical taste, for example, gave up his violin or piano to learn the African banjo, because that happened to be the fashionable instrument?

Yet there are, no doubt, many women whose eyes even custom cannot blind to the hideousness of most Parisian fashions. But they have not the courage to show their superior taste in their dresses, being overawed and paralysed in presence of a monstrous idol, the Fashion Fetish.

Never has a stone image, consecrated by cunning priests, exercised a more magic influence on a superstitious heathen’s mind than the invisible Fashion Fetish on the modern feminine intellect. It is both amusing and pathetic to hear a woman exclaim: “Our women are most blind and thoughtless followers of fashions still imposed upon them, _Heaven knows wherefore and by whom_” (Mrs. Haweis).

So great is the awe in which this Fetish is held that no one has yet dared to lay violent hands on it. Yet if we now knock it on the head, we shall find it hollow inside; and the fragments, subjected to chemical analysis, show that they consist of the following five elements:—

(1) _Vulgar Display of Wealth._—A certain number of rich people, being unable to distinguish themselves from poorer mortals in any other way, make a parade of their money by constantly introducing changes in the fashion of their apparel which those who have less income are unable to adopt at once. This, and not the love of novelty, is the real cause of the minute variations in styles constantly introduced. Of course it is generally understood that to boast of your wealth is as vulgar as to boast of your wit or wisdom; but this makes no difference, for Fashion in its very essence is vulgar.

(2) _Milliners’ Cunning._—Milliners grow fat on fashionable extravagance. Hence it is the one object of their life to encourage this extravagance. So they constantly invent new styles, to prevent women from wearing the same dress more than one season. And every customer is slyly flattered into the belief that nothing was ever so becoming to her as the latest style, though it probably makes her look like a fright. As a little flattery goes a great way with most women, the milliner’s hypocrisy escapes detection. “The persons who devise fashions are not artists in the best sense of the word, nor are they persons of culture or taste,” as Mr. E. L. Godkin remarks: “their business is not to provide beautiful costumes but new ones.”

It is to such scheming and unscrupulous artisans that women entrust the care of their personal appearance. And they will continue doing so until they are more generally taught the elements of the fine arts and a love of beauty in Nature.

To make sure of a rich harvest, milliners, when a new fashion has appeared, manufacture all their goods in that style, so that it is almost impossible to buy any others, all of which are declared “bad form.” And their poor victims meekly submit to this tyranny!

(3) _Tyranny of the Ugly Majority._—This is another form of tyranny from which ladies suffer. Most women are ugly and ungraceful, and resent the contrast which beautiful women, naturally and becomingly attired, would present to their own persons: hence they favour the crinolette, the bustle, the corset, the long, trailing dresses, the sleeve-puffs at the shoulders, etc., because such fashionable devices make all women look equally ugly and ungraceful.

Mrs. Armytage throws light on the origin of some absurd fashions when she refers to the cases of “the patches first applied to hide an ugly wen: of cushions carried to equalise strangely-deformed hips; of long skirts to cover ugly feet; and long shoes to hide an excrescence on the toe.”

Surely it is sufficient to expose the origin of such fashions to make sensible women turn away from them in disgust. There are indeed indications that the handsome women have at last begun to find out the trick which the ugly majority have been playing on them; and many are now dressing in such a way as to show their personal beauty to advantage, undaunted by the fact that ugly women pretend to be shocked at short dresses which allow a pretty ankle to be seen, and jerseys which reveal the outlines of a beautiful bust and waist.

(4) _Cowardice._—Many women adopt a fashion which they dislike simply because they do not dare to face the remark of a rival that they are not in fashion. As one of them frankly confesses: “We women dress not to be simple, genuine, and harmonious, or even to please you men, but _to brave each other’s criticism_.” A noble motive, truly!

One is often tempted to doubt the old saying that the first desire of women is to be considered beautiful, on observing how ready they are to sacrifice fifty per cent or more of their beauty for the sake of being in fashion. Last summer, for instance, the edict seems to have gone forth that the hair was no longer to be allowed to form a graceful fringe over the forehead, but was to be combed back tightly. So back it was combed, and beautiful faces became rarer than ever. Leigh Hunt had written in vain that the hair should be brought over large bare foreheads “as vines are trailed over a wall.” Théophile Gautier, “the most perfect poet in respect of poetical form that France has ever produced” (Saintsbury), agreed with Schopenhauer regarding woman’s æsthetic sense: “Women,” he says, “have only the sense of fashion and not that of beauty. A woman will always find beautiful the most abominable fashion if it is the _genre suprême_ to wear that style.” He commends the women of Granada for their good taste in preferring their lovely mantillas to the hideous French hats, and hopes Spain may never be invaded by French fashions and milliners.

(5) _Sheepishness._—It may seem ungallant to apply this term to the conduct of a woman who imitates the habits of a sheep; but, after all, which is the more gallant action: to applaud a woman’s self-chosen ugliness, or, at least, to ignore it for fear of offending her; or, on the other hand, to restore her beauty by boldly holding up the mirror and allowing her to see herself as others see her? It is the nature of a flock of sheep to jump into the sea without a moment’s hesitation if their leader does so. It is the nature of fashionable women to commit æsthetic suicide if their leader sets the example. Where is the difference?

It is surprising that Darwin did not refer to Fashion as furnishing a most convincing proof of his theory that men are descended from apelike ancestors. One of the ape’s most conspicuous traits is imitativeness—blind, silly, slavish imitation: hence the verb “to ape.” Blind, silly, slavish imitation is also the essence of Fashion. Imitativeness implies a low order of mind, a lack of originality. The more a man is intellectually removed from the ape, the less is he inclined to imitate blindly. Men of genius are a law unto themselves, while inferior minds can only re-echo or plagiarise. Just so the prevalent anxiety to be in fashion is a tacit confession of mental inferiority, of insufficient independence of taste and originality to choose a style suited to one’s individual requirements.

INDIVIDUALISM _VERSUS_ FASHION

Fashion is a deadly enemy of Romantic Love, not only because it makes women sacrifice their Beauty to unhealthful garments and habits, but because it obliterates _individuality_, on which the ardour of Love depends. “Why don’t girls marry?” asks Mrs. Haweis. “Because the press is great, and girls are undistinguishable in the crowd. The distinguishable ones marry—those who are beautiful or magnetic in some way, whose characters have some definite colouring, and who can make their _individuality_ felt. I would have said—who can make themselves in any way conspicuous, but that the word has been too long associated with an _undesirable_ prominence. Yet after all, prominence is the thing needed—prominence of character, or _individuality_. Men, so to speak, pitch upon the girls they can see: those who are completely negative, unnoticeable, colourless, formless, invisible, are left behind.”

Women, in their eagerness to sacrifice their individuality to Fashion, forget that _fashion leaders are never in fashion_, _i.e._ that _they_ always adopt a new style as soon as the crowd has aped them: wherefore it is doubly silly to join the apes.

Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt never allows a corset to deform her figure and mar her movements: and who has not had occasion to admire the inimitable grace of this actress? But how many women have the courage thus to sacrifice Fashion to Grace and Beauty?

Yet, notwithstanding the continuance of the corset and the bustle mania and Parisian hats, it may be asserted that women are just at present more sensibly dressed than they have been for some generations, and there is _some_ disposition to listen to the artistic and hygienic advice of reformers. Unfortunately, the history of Fashion does not tend to confirm any optimistic hopes that may be based on this fact. There have been periods heretofore when women became comparatively sensible, only to relapse again into utter barbarism. Thus we read that “after the straight gown came the fardingale, which in turn developed into the hoop with its concomitants of patches, paint, and high-heeled shoes.” Then came the reaction: “Short waists and limp, clinging draperies came in to expose every contour; stays and corsets were for a time discredited, only to be reintroduced, and with them the whole cycle of fashions which had once already had their day.”

Experience shows that argumentation, ridicule, malicious or good-natured, and satire, are equally powerless against Fashion. Progress can only be hoped for in two ways—by instructing women in the elementary laws of beauty in nature and mankind, and by destroying the superstitious halo around the word _Fashion_. It has just been shown that a disposition to imitate a fashion set by others is always a sign of inferior intellect and rudimentary taste; and the time no doubt will come when this fact will be generally recognised, and when it will be considered anything but a compliment to have it said that one follows the flock of fashionable imitators.

The progress of democratic institutions and sentiments will aid in emancipating women from the slavery of Fashion. Empresses who can set the fashion for two continents are becoming scarce; and the woman of the future will no doubt open her eyes wide in astonishment on reading that in the nineteenth century most women allowed some mysterious personage to prescribe what they should wear. “Can it be _possible_,” she will exclaim, "that my poor dear grandmothers did not know that what is food for one person is poison for another, and that any fashion universally followed means æsthetic suicide for nine-tenths of the women who adopt it? _I_ am _my own fashion-leader_, and wear only what is becoming to my _individual_ style of beauty. What a preposterous notion to proclaim that any particular colour or cut is to be exclusively fashionable this year for all women, for blondes and brunettes, for the tall and the short, the stout and the slim alike! What _could_ have induced those women thus to annihilate their own beauty deliberately? And not only their beauty, but their comfort as well. For I see that in New York, Fashion used to decree that women must exchange their light, comfortable summer clothes for heavier autumn fabrics exactly in the middle of September, although the last two weeks of September are often the hottest part of the year. And the women, almost without exception, obeyed this decree!

“And then those long trailing dresses! How they must have added to their ease and grace of movement in the ballroom, tucked up clumsily or held in the hand! And it seems that these trails were even worn in the dirty streets, for I see that at one time the Dresden authorities forbade women to sweep the streets with their dresses; and in one of Mr. Ruskin’s works I find this advice to girls: ‘Your walking dress must never touch the ground at all. I have lost much of the faith I once had in the common sense, and even in the personal delicacy, of the present race of average English women, by seeing how they will allow their dresses to sweep the streets if it is _the fashion to be scavengers_.’”

MASCULINE FASHIONS

In his emancipation from Fashion man has made much more progress than woman. There is still a considerable number of shallow-brained young “society men” who naïvely and minutely accept the slight variations introduced every year in the cut and style of cravats, shirts, and evening-dress by cunning tailors, in order to compel men to throw away last season’s suits and order new ones. But much larger is the number of men who disregard such innovations, and laugh at the silly persons who meekly accept them, even when their taste is offended by such new fashions as the hideous collars and hats with which the market is occasionally flooded.

There was a time when men spent as much time and money on dress in a week as they now do in a year; a time when men were as strictly ruled by capricious, cunning Fashion as women are to-day. Lord March, we read, “laid a wager that he would make fashionable the most humiliating dress he could think of. Accordingly, he wore a blue coat with crimson collar and cuffs—a livery, and not a tasteful livery—but he won his bet.” After the battle of Agincourt, it is said, “the Duc de Bourbon, in order to ransom King John, sold his overcoat to a London Jew, who gave no more than its value, we may be pretty sure, but nevertheless gave 5200 crowns of gold for it. It seems to have been a mass of the most precious gems.” The Duke of Buckingham “had twenty-seven suits of clothes made, the richest that embroidery, lace, silk, velvet, silver, gold, and gems could contribute; one of which was a white uncut velvet, set all over, both suit and cloak, with diamonds valued at fourscore thousand pounds, besides a great feather stuck all over with diamonds, as were also his sword, girdle, hat, and spurs.”

Mr. Spencer cites two amusing instances of masculine subjection to fashion in Africa and mediæval Europe. Among the Darfurs in Africa, “If the sultan, being on horseback, happens to fall off, all his followers must fall off likewise; and should any one omit this formality, however great he may be, he is laid down and beaten.” “In 1461, Duke Philip of Burgundy, having had his hair cut during an illness, issued an edict that all the nobles of his states should be shorn also. More than five hundred persons sacrificed their hair.”

So far as men are still subject to the influence of ugly fashions, they differ from women in at least frankly acknowledging the ugliness of these fashions. Whereas most women admire, or pretend to admire, corsets, high-heeled boots, crinolettes, bustles, etc., there are few men who do not detest _e.g._ the unshapely, baggy trousers, which were so greatly abhorred by the æsthetic sense of the ancient Greeks; and most men to-day (except those who have ugly legs) would gladly wear knee-breeches, if they could do so without making themselves too conspicuous. Herein lies the greatest impediment to dress reform. To make oneself very conspicuous is justly considered a breach of good manners; and few have the courage, like Mr. Oscar Wilde, to make martyrs and butts of ridicule of themselves.

But if individuals are comparatively powerless, clubs of acknowledged standing might make themselves very useful to the cause of Personal Beauty, as affected by dress, if they would vote to adopt in a body certain reforms as regards trousers, hats, and evening-dress. Then it would no longer be said of a man rationally dressed that he is eccentric, but that he belongs to the X—— Club; and many outsiders would immediately follow suit for the coveted distinction of being taken for members of that club. Thus both the wise and the foolish would be gratified.

As showing how invariably and consistently Fashion is the handmaid of ugliness, it is curious to note that the several styles of dress worn by men are fashionable in proportion to their ugliness. For the greatest occasions the swallow-tail or evening-dress is prescribed. Next in rank is the ugly frock-coat, for morning calls. Of late, it is true, the more becoming “cut-away” has been tolerated in place of the frock-coat; but the sack-coat, which alone follows the natural outlines of the body, and neither has a caudal appendage, like the evening-dress, nor, like the frock-coat, gives the impression that a man’s waist extends down to his knees, is altogether tabooed at social gatherings, except those of the most informal kind.

Man’s evening-dress is so uniquely unæsthetic and ugly that fashionable women have of course long been eyeing it with envy and have gradually adopted some of its features. One of these is the chimney-pot hat, the cause of so much premature baldness and discomfort. But women are not quite so foolish as men in this matter; for they do not wear tall hats at evening-parties and the opera, but only when out riding, where the necessity of dodging about to keep them on against the force of the wind and the blows of overhanging boughs, compels them to go through all sorts of grotesque gymnastics with neck and head. If they wore a more rational and becoming head-dress on horseback they might easily look pretty and graceful, which would be fatal to their chances of being considered fashionable.

In comparing masculine and feminine fashions, we must note that trousers and swallow-tailed coats, though ugly, are harmless; while high-heeled shoes, corsets, chignons, etc., are as fatal to health as to Personal Beauty.

It is sometimes claimed in behalf of Fashion that, though it often favours ugliness, it establishes a rule and model for all; whereas, if everything were left to individual taste, the result might be still more disastrous. Nonsense. Rare as good taste is among women, a modicum is commonly present; and there are extremely few who, if not overawed by the Fashion Fetish, would ever invent or adopt such hideous irrepressible monstrosities as bustles, crinolines, chignons, trailing dresses, Chinese boots, bird-corpse hats, etc.

A protest must, finally, be made against the horrible figures which in our fashion papers are constantly offered as models of style and appearance. Even in the best of them, such as Harper’s _Bazar_, which frequently points out the injuriousness of tight lacing, female figures are printed every week with hideously narrow waists, such as no woman could possibly possess unless she were in the last stages of consumption, or some other wasting disease.

CHEST AND BOSOM

FEMININE BEAUTY

Burke, in his chapter on “Gradual Variation” as a characteristic of Beauty, begs us to “observe that part of a beautiful woman where she is perhaps the most beautiful, about the neck and breasts; the smoothness, the softness, the easy and insensible swell; the variety of the surface, which is never for the smallest space the same; the deceitful maze through which the unsteady eye slides giddily, without knowing where to fix, or whither it is carried. Is not this a demonstration of that change of surface, continual, and yet hardly perceptible at any point, which forms one of the greatest constituents of beauty?”

There is reason to believe that the beautifully-rounded form of the female bosom is a result of æsthetico-sexual selection; for primitive human tribes resemble in this respect the lower animals. Says the famous anatomist Hyrtl: “It is only among the white and yellow races that the breasts, in their compact virginal condition, have a hemispheric form, while those of negresses of a corresponding age and physique are more elongated, pointed, turned outwards and downwards; in a word, more like the teats of animals.” Even the Arabian poets sing of the charms of a goatlike breast. In the Soudan older women, when at work, sometimes throw their breasts over the shoulder to prevent them from being in the way; and “the women of the Basutos, a Kaffir tribe, carry their children on the back, and pass the breast to them under the arm.”

It is a very interesting and important fact that not only do we find more beauty among the higher than among the lower races of mankind, but the superior beauty of civilised races is also _of a more permanent kind_. This truth is admirably illustrated in the following remarks by Dr. Peschuel Lœschke: The breasts of the Loango negress, he says, “approach the conic rather than the hemispheric form; they often have a too small and insufficiently gradated basis, and in rare extreme cases have almost the appearance of teats, besides being unequally developed. Breasts of such a shape are naturally much more easily affected by the law of gravitation, and soon become changed into the pendent bags which we find so ugly, especially among Africans, although they also occur among other tribes, and are not unknown among civilised peoples. The superior form, with a broad basis, is naturally the more enduring, and remains in many cases an ornament of women of a more advanced age.”