Page:Every Woman's Encyclopedia Volume 1.djvu/350

 BEAUTY 328 FMYSICAL CUILTURE FOR WOMEM By Mrs. C. LEIGH HUNT VVALLACB What is Beauty ?-Early Influences on Child Beauty-The Effects of Correot and Incorrect Positions during Sleep-Normal Heights and Weights of Fully Developed Women-Outdoor Sports and Woman^s Grace THERE is no fixed standard of beauty that can be applied to the face and form of woman— at least, not in a popular sense. The style of beauty that may appeal to one class of person, one race, or one period of history, may not appeal to another person, race, or age. The idea of beauty appeals to the mind, while the influence of beauty appeals to the senses or the suscepti- bility of the beholder. The relative proportions of the various The correct position for sleeping on the side parts are supposed to be the basis of beauty in the human and animal creation, but unless the whole is suggestive of fitness for its sphere of activity, there is a sense of a some- thing lacking, of a weakness, a tameness, that robs it of its attractiveness. Hogarth insisted that the principles of beauty came under the heads of fitness, variety, uniformity, simplicity, intricacy, and quantity. Beauty, or the influence of beauty, in woman must be felt before it can be analysed. The material beauty of face and figure is in- significant as compared with the psycho- logical force that animates her being. The bewitching, subtle art of indefinable and magnetic attractiveness, often unconsciously owned and ingenuously expressed, is the very soul and essence of beauty. A woman so endowed, even an unlovely woman, will enslave not only the men, but the women of her sphere. The men wonder at their adoration, while the women praise, imitate, and practise every tone of her voice, every quaint turn of her head, and slavishly bedeck themselves after her style and manner, even to endeavouring to acquire and simulate her defects. Even without taking into consideration the need of the personal charm of individual style, there is a beauty that is directly the outcome of ungainliness, as illustrated in the engaging awkwardness of the long- legged colt, of the clumsy puppy destined to become a relatively large and heavy- w^eight hound, of the girl and youth in their hobbledehoy years. Sir Joshua Reynolds comments on the beauty of ugliness by noting that " there is likewise a kind of symmetiy or proportion in deformity." Nevertheless, the study and the analysis of beauty from the artist's and sculptor's point of view, combined with an understand- ing and appreciation of the normal, from a physiological standpoint, are essential for every woman to understand, both for the purpose of enhancing her own perfections and those of her children. Nothing is more interesting to a mother than to watch and nurture the growth and development of the potential beauty of her children. Though at birth the female infant is half an inch shorter than the male infant, yet at about the thirteenth or fourteenth year, the average girl begins to outstrip the average boy, both in height and weight, and in the course of a few months her early womanhood is often established, after which the rapidity of her growth diminishes. The youth, however, occupies a period of from three to four years for his development into manhood, during which time he continues to grow, often very rapidly, with the result that he is permanently taller and heavier than the average girl of the same age. These are the critical periods of life that influence womanhood and manhood for good or ill. Statistics show that among the An unhygienic position for sleeping labouring population, where many insanitary conditions exist, the undeveloped stage is arrested for two or even three years, as compared with that of the better nourished, better slept, and more sanitarily clothed and housed. Sleeping in the recumbent position, with unconstricted limbs, is a great aid, at these critical periods, to the development of a full- length stature. It is observed that even during illness, when the nutritive powers of