FASHION IN DEFORMITY.

Dunstan Times, Issue 953, 23 July 1880, Page 3

FASHION IN DEFORMITY.

(British American Journal ) Professor Flower, F.U 8,, lately delivered a lecture at the Royal Institution, before a crowded audience, ou“ Fashion in Deformity," He passed in review the various methods adopted by different nations and at different ages of deforming or altering the natural form of some portion of the body, in obedience to the dictates of fashion. The various practices of shaving, cutting, and dressing the hair'and beard, and tattooing the skin, wore alluded to by him ; but more attention was given to the disfigurement of the nose, lips and ears, by cutting holes and inserting various substances through them—almost identical customs beingdescribed among people living in moat remote regions of the world. The fantastic methods of filing and chipping the the front teeth into different patterns, practised by the Malays and some African Negroes, were then noticed. An account of the mode of altering the form of the head, which prevailed once extensively in Europe, and was almost universally adopted in Peru, and on the west coast of North America, was followed by a description of the effects produced upon the feet of civilised races by the unnatural form of boots commonly worn, tho evils of pointed toes and high heels being exemplified by diagrams and specimens. Tho construction of the Waist was next noticed, the figure of the Venus of Milo and one taken from the last Pans fashion-book being compared and contrasted. All these customs wore shown to arise from a similar propensity, which manifested itself in the human mind under all conditions of civilisation, to tamper with a form which good sense as well as good taste ought to teach was the most perfect that could be designed. Tho origin of these fashions was mostly lost in obscurity, ah attempts to solve them being little more than guesses. Some of them have become associated with superstitious observances, and have been spread and perpetuated ; some have been vaguely thought to be hygienic ; moat have some relation to conventional standards of improved personal appearance ; but, whatever their origin, the desire to conform to common usage, and not to appear singular, is the prevailing motive which leads to their continuance. The vitiation of taste produced by these conventional standards, which shows itself in the Malay in the preference of black teeth to those of the most pearly whiteness ; in the Bougs, Negro, and American Botocudos, in liking lips and ears which are enormously and to our eyes hideously enlarged by huge wooden plugs inserted through them, is displayed among ourselves by the admiration of unnaturally pointed toes and contracted waists.