Page:Personal Beauty and Racial Betterment.djvu/35

 Rh which are judged both by the artist and the layman to be the ideal of beauty. In this we are of course swayed largely by the limitations of our education, which on these matters is artificial; probably there would be a greater difference in racial ideals, if conditions were more natural.

The simplest explanation for the accepted ideal of form would be that it is the average form of the healthy individual. This explanation, I think, is not supportable. Among the Greeks and Romans, for example, the ideal ankle, for a woman at least, was a small ankle, not a medium-sized one. Among us, a small foot has been desirable; so much so that women have been compelled to wear shoes which, by raising the heel several inches, make the ground-base of the shoe about two thirds the real length of the foot. This procedure makes the foot seem shorter, or at least it did until the recent shortening of the skirt brought the artifice out where it cannot be over- looked. One of the most important and desirable effects of the permanent adoption of sensible clothing by women will be the allowing of the foot to retain its natural form. Of body-form, which is by rights the fundamental consideration in beauty, I shall say nothing further, because our standards are so obscure. The subject is in need of thorough investigation by the methods of