Page:Personal Beauty and Racial Betterment.djvu/47

Rh A certain amount of fatty tissue is normal, and is essential for the health of the individual. Fat constitutes a store of reserve material, which may be drawn on in time of unusual need; and without it endurance is limited. This reserve store is probably not so important at present as it was in primitive times, when man lived in a hand-to-mouth way, uncertain today what the food supply would be day after tomorrow. On the other hand, beyond a certain amount, fat is an encumbrance, impeding the operation of many organs, and thus limiting the efficiency of the individual, and also is in itself a symptom of faulty organic functioning of some kind. We are not surprised therefore to find that beauty demands just the right degree of leanness; just the degree which is found in the most vigorous individual.

The standards are somewhat different for the two sexes, because the anatomical conditions and physiological necessities are different. In the female, especially in the young female, there is a special layer of fatty tissue underlying the skin, which is absent in the male. This gives her the roundness and softness of outline which is essential to the perfection of feminine beauty, and also prevents her from feeling the cold so much as the male does. Possibly also it explains why she swims more easily. (It is a fact that women are as a class far better swimmers; this has been ascribed