VENUS “DOWDY.”

Putaruru Press, Volume VII, Issue 269, 3 January 1929, Page 5

VENUS “DOWDY.”

NEW IDEA OF BEAUTY. I | If the Venus de Milo were to come j. to life to-day, attire herself in modern clothing, and apply for a job in a Lon--1 don West End chorus, she would certainly not get it (says the Daily Ex- ; press). The truth is that time and geography fix the world s standards of I beauty, and the heroic lines and plumpness of the Milo Venus, once consid--1 ered the apotheosis of female beauty, j suit neither modern fashions nor the j modern conception of the perfect figure. •! It was announced recently by an Italian sculptor that he nad found in the person of Signorina Doiidy an almost exact duplicate of the Venus de Milo. In no one detail was there the difference of an inch in measurement. Yet when an American motion picture.com--1 pany was about to produce a picture in which the Goddess of Beauty was a principal character, after searching tho world for the ideal type and obtaining photographs of Signorina Dondy, they finally selected for the part Miss Thelma Todd, whose measurements are nothing like those of the Venus de Milo or her modern prototype. In choosing Miss Todd, they selected an ideal specimen of the beauty which appeals to the world to-day. Even with the latest fashion decree's, which demand the abolition of the “flat chest," and the acquirement of a fuller figure, the Venus de Milo would not avoid being classed as a “dowd," for apart from any of her other measurements, her height of sft. 4in. would not reach the average height of the modern beauty, who has to be slim-waisted as well. No man would turn b s head to look at the celebrated Venus in a one-piece bathing suite, except from motives of amazement. The relief afforded by the latest fashions to those women who have starved themselves in order to have fashionable figures should not be taken as indicative of a step towards the return of the popularity of “plumpness," and a reversion to the Venus type, for the doom of the plump figure has come even in Turkey, where embonpoint has been idealised for centuries. A regime of sport for women has put the Miloesque style of beauty out of court and the Venus de Milo now remains not as a standard, but as a piece of historical evidence of the tastes of the ancients.