BEAUTY COUNTS

Shannon News, 23 July 1929, Page 4

BEAUTY COUNTS

DOCTORS AND JUDGES. England has started a new sort of beauty contest. It is based on the notion that beauty is health. No woman can be considered beautiful, the sponsors of the new type of competition declare, who is not, also healthy. A great many winners of beauty contests, although they might pass triumphantly before a committee of artists, would fail miserably before a committee or: doctors. It is pointed out that baby contests are held along the principle of physical perfection rathfer than physical charm. The new beauty contests are, in fact, very much like baby contests.

The British magazine, ' Health and Strength sponsored the first of the physical culture beauty contests. It was held at tho National Sporting Club and there were two sets of judges. One committee was composed of physicians, who examined the contestants from the point of view of mere physical perfection. Tests were made of the heart, lungs, eyes, nose, and throat. Beautiful girls with attractive retrousse noses were turned down because they did not breathe properly through their noses. Candidates who would have no difii eulty in passing before a battery of lorgnettes ran up against trouble before tho stethoscope. ' Over four hundred girls were entered in the contest, many of them trained athletes, expert in tennis, horseback riding, track running, and. other snorts. Yet by the time tho committee of judges weie thrpugh with them, over half had been disqualified for one physical defect or another. The remaining young women were ready now for a second trial. The judges this time were experts in "grace and deportment.” 'Without regard for facial beauty, they judged the girls from the point of view of carriage,-dancing ability, lithoness, and general grace. Less than a hundred girls survived, the second judgment. The survivors were then paraded before a committee of sculptors and artists, the chairman of which was Mr, Erie Gill, the sculptor. It was the responsibility of this ihird group 1 of judges to consider the remaining girls purely 1 from the viewpoint of aesthetic beauty. They were unable to select any one girl as standing out among those they judged, and finally selected three young women \vlio were pronounced perfect from the poi .1 .of view of beauty, grace, and physical perfection. But. the sponsors of the contest were determined to select one from among these three, and inasmuch as the judges had been unable to make a selection, another judge was appointed, whose duty it was to make a selection from among the three. Albert Toft, the sculptor, received tho difficult_ assignment. • After a great deal of difficulty, he finally named one of the girls as the most beautiful as well as the mpst perfect of the more than 40*’- who had originally entered the competition. The winner was Miss Ellen Mackenzie, of London.