AMERICAN WOMEN.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1256, 16 March 1878, Page 3

AMERICAN WOMEN.

American women take vastly better care of themselves than formerly. They have more acquaintance with hygienic laws, and hold them in far higher esteem. The days when they exposed themselves to dampness and wintry cold, in thin slippers and silk stockings; when they abstained from flannels next to the skin ; when they pinched their waists to semi-suffocation ; when they sacrificed comfort and health to what they conceived to be their appearance—these foolish and unhappy days have gone forever, have barely been known to the rising generation. Our women now have no mawkish and morbid notions as to themselves ; they no longer think that to be unhealthy is to be attractive ; that invalidism and interestingnesa arc synonymous ; that pale faces and compressed lungs are tokens of beauty. They dress seasonably; they wear thick boots and warm clothes in bad and cold weather ; they allow themselves to breathe freely, and they find their looks improved, not injured, by the wholesome change. There are exceptions—many of them doubtless—but the rule is as we have described, and the exceptions are constantly diminishing. It may be safely said that all sensible women are becoming, if they have not yet become, converts to nature, and that they heed her behests, recognising the great principle that what is not natural cannot be beautiful.—Harper's " Bazaar."