CHANGING FACES

Evening Star, Issue 22450, 22 September 1936, Page 11

CHANGING FACES

GAIN IN CHARACTER Within little more than a century, woman’s face has changed. When representative types of. beauty of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are set beside their modern equals, one can see that plainly (writes George Godwin, in the Sydney ‘Morning Herald’)._ Great artists commonly idealise their subjects. Even so, _ tho reader who studies first the old-time beauties, and then tho alert modernity of to-day’s young woman will see at once that in little more than a century a great change has taken place. How have women’s faces changed, and what factors have influenced the development of the new type? Consider those beauties of a vanished past. The faces are oval, the expressions those of repose or of childlike animation. The brows are smoothed and unmarked, the mouths soft and mobile, the chins unaggressive, the general head poise gracious. They are, in a word, what one might designate “ sweet ” women, tho sort of women towards whom a man’s thoughts might turn at moments of crisis or distress. There is nothing hard there, but only what is essentially “ feminine.” Emma Lady Hamilton was- typical of them. And it was to this glamorous woman that Nelson’s thoughts turned both before the Battle of Trafalgar and at the moment of death, when the battle was at its height. Now study our modern types and mark tho quite obvious changes. Tho face is a trifle longer, but it is the expression that so dramatically marks another age and tho feminine product of it. The modern woman’s mouth is firmer than that of her great-grand-mother, even when wo have set aside effects resulting from lipstick. There is sometimes even a hint of hardness. Has tho typo gained anything, as against the other, Perhaps. And it is when one contemplates the eyes that this seems to he so. The eyes of those beauties of the past are lovely still as we seo them looking out at ns from the canvases of the masters. But beautiful, too, are the eyes of our modern women. Yet they are changed, for place of that childlike sweetness there is the alert look of the intelligent human being, Eve to-day has speaking eyes; that is to say, her eyes aro lit by the inner light of a fast-moving and agile mind. But how, the reader may ask, can such changes have come about in so brief a period? It is a fair question. Obviously in little more than a hundred years there can have been no change in the hone—millions of years must lapse before man’s—and woman’s—skullshapes alter noticeably. THE KEY TO THE RIDDLE. No, it is not in tho development of the jaw. or in tho cheekbones or brows, that tho change lias corao about. It is in the infinitely malleable substance of flesh and blood that makes up the modelling of the face that wo have tho key to tho riddle. Tlie changes that have taken place aro due to mental causes which, in turn, have influenced that complex structure of facial muscles that, in its entirety, gives expression. “ As we think, so wo arc,” said tho old philosopher. “ As we think, so do wo appear,” one might add. The sweetness, tho gentleness, the chitdlikencss of those bygone beauties were due to the small world in which, protected on all sides, they passd their lives. That is why, by comparison, those lovely faces that look out at us from the masterpieces of our groat galleries seem, by comparison with those of the women of to-day, insipid, empty. Me see in them the typo of woman whom it may be good and very pleasant to_ look upon, but whom it is a hardship to live with. .Modem Eve's face reveals the quick-thinking daughter of an age enmplcx and compact with inescapable problems, incessant .struggle.

No woman to-day—or very few—can retire to her ivory tower. Few ivory towers remain, and even to those that do comes up the clamour of the seething world beyond the guarded portal. What woman to-day, for example, can sit back and ignore such problems as war, poverty, nationalism, and the like? It cannot be done. The portal of her fastness is down, and the enemy Life is within. Actually, the gain more than offsets the loss. There may be, as many say, a real loss in “ womanliness,” but there is undeniable gain in character. For to-day women make decisions. They no longer defer to any all-wise. male. And those decisions leave a facial record —that fearlessness that looks out from wide and shrewd eyes. They mould, too. the minute lines that lie beneath the camouflage of lipstick at the mouth’s corners. They develop the chin, giving it its determined articulation. In short, such changes as have come about are due in large measure to changes in the way of woman’s life in our times. It is a life differing little from that of menfolk, a life of strenuous competition for the good things, of audacious enterprise (imagine the divine Emma piloting a 100-miles-an-hour single-seater aeroplane!), of intellectual work in many fields. So it would be surprising had woman remained the fragile, gentle, touch-me-not being that once she was. It is sometimes said, generally by those who criticise our times on every side, that women are less womanly than they were, that the modern woman has lost much of her feminine charm. That was probably said by the old of every generation. Actually, far from becoming less feminine, in the true sense of that word, women of our time who enter fully into the multiudo of activities that are now open to them thereby become better companions, more understanding wives. If Eve has become a trifle harder, she has become a trifle deeper. She knows life at first hand where her greatgrandmother knew it from hooks and the indiscreet talk of unheeding men. And if these changes in her condition arc reflected in her face, it is no less beautiful for that.