FASHION’S IN LIPS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 826, 23 December 1882, Page 2

FASHION’S IN LIPS.

“ The Bongo women” (says Schweinfurth) “ delight in distinguishing themselves by an 'adornment which to our nation is nothing less than a hideous mutilation. As soon as a woman is married the operation commences of extending her lower lip. This, at first only slightly bored, is widened by inserting into the orifice plugs of wood, gradually increasing in size until at length the entire feature is enlarged to five or six times its original proportions. The plugs are cylindrical in form, not less than an inch thick, and are exactly like the pegs of bone or wood worn by the women of Musgoo. By this means the lower lip is extended horizontally till it projects far above the upper, which is also bored and fitted with a copper plate or nail, and now and than by a little ring, and sometimes by a bit of straw, about as thick as a lucifer match. Nor do they leave the nose intact; similar bits of straw are inserted in the edges of the nostrils, and I have seen as many ,as three of these on each side. A favorite ornament for the cartilage between the nostrils is a copper ring, just like those that are placed in the nose of buffaloes and other beasts of burden for the purpose of rendering them tractable. The greatest coquettes among the ladies wear a clasp or cramp at the corners of the mouth, as though they wanted to contract the orifice, and literally, to put a curb upon its capabilities. These subsidiary ornaments are not, however, found at all universally among the women, and it is rare to see them all at once upon a single individual; the plug in the lower lip of the married woman is alone sine qua non , serving as it does

for an artificial distinction of race.”—Popular Science Monthly for October.