WOMAN'S WHIMS AND WAYS.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2024, 30 June 1875, Page 2

WOMAN'S WHIMS AND WAYS.

We crave exouse for the alliteration, not elegant, perhaps, but still forcible. Women, we know, must have ways, and when they have .ways it seems as if whims must follow. It does not matter much if the whim be but a slight' exaggeration of a way, uniformly for tho mosfc part wo are glad to say, correct and true, but when the sudden whim causes women to diverge almost as it were at right angles from the way in which all who have her welfare at heart—as all should have—love to see her walking in, then it is that tho whim, seeming to be but.of a trivial kind and hardly worth a moment's notice, becomes a matter of weighty import indeed. Please do not misunderstand us. We utterly scout the idea of any approach to misogyny, for we hold a misogynist to be the most despicable of created things, but we cannot help feeling at times a sadness which is " almost akin to pain-' at tho whims which seize on women of -the present day, for they would appear to point to a time not far distant, when tho blade now making.its appearance in an. increased craving after novelty and fashion will bear bitter fruit in a vitiated taste, and fictitious value attached to appearances. _ >, ■.. Woman, like man, is a gregarious animal, living in flocks and following one leader, fashion. Unhappily though they do not stop where; their .leader first ' intended them to, but, still..raiiimng the " simile to a flock of sheep, or deer, persist in pressing on, one a little before the other, so that the bounds of neatness—** we fear we may add in some cases even o decency—are more and more transgressed -

and that fashion, which if adopted at one bold step would have been considerd outre in the extreme, becomes by slight degrees to be regarded as simply ■omething " new." Take an average fashionable woman of the present day, and then say if anything moro artificial and unnatural in the way of womankind existed, even in the days of fardingales and patches; To begin wifh the most important part, the head. Well the head of the arerage woman—-fl c presume that she wears a hat —varies in length from a cubit to a cubit and a span. The small beautiful head wlvch nature has given her is rendered almost hideous by the hair being heaped upon it in several stories, art assisting, where naturo refuses to supply the amount required for this Tower of BabeL On the summit of this she has—tilted at an angle of 45° —a hat* more or less hideous, as the whim of the wearer dictates; or if her whim suggests to her the idea of varying the art of disguise a little, she cuts her front hair so as to hide what might be perhaps an intellectual forehead,; or else—to vary again— has it frizzed and sticking round her, like an islander of Madagascar. The neck-tie, so useful an adjunct in heightening or subduing the general tone of the dress and which affords such an easy means for her to display her taste for appropriate colour, is now, according to one of her latest whims, pulled violently found under the left earorrfastened at the back, suggesting to the outraged eye of the observer that this whim is the result of seeing school boys with their ties all awry, after a hot game of football or cricket. Her dresses vary ? displaying of course, more or' less taste, but we are unfeignedly glad to see that the whims of women in New Zealand do not lead them into becoming amateur dust-sweepers, by wearing . lengthy trains in the street, as is, or was, the case in England. With her shoes or boots, she is almost complete; but these, alas! are not made so as to render 1 walking either easy or graceful, but fashioned with high heels tapering almost to a point; the heel—some inches in length—formed so as to throw, the figure forward at an inclination to the ground she walks on. To obviate; the; danger, however, which must exist of her overbalancing herself, art has suggested a counterpoise in the whim of making her dress absurdly large and unseemly behind —to balance we sup•posej the,tendency the ridiculous heels give, of a forward movement with the nose to the ground. Of course clad in this way it is impossible that our wives, daughters, and sisters can walk either gracefully or naturally, and the consequence is that she walks our streeti, not like a "thing of life," but with a semi- : swagger arid painfully artificial movement, which makes sad all those who love and reverence her. We are not Utopian in our ideas ; we dp not wish to see women a - living example of Tennyson's ideal,. " faultily faultless ; " but, we do sigh for a little" more of the real'grace which woman from her birth possesses. Do not again misunderstand its; we have an intense disbelief in the old quotation about ''beaiit^ unadorned adorned the most;" we love,to see women well and tastefully "dressed; but if she cannot go about "in gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls," there surely is nothing which does or should exist, to prevent: her being " plain in her neatness. So much for some of woman's whims, the; subject is ; too long for, the occasion—too short for the text, and much more;;might :be. written, and we think should be, on this subject; and sincerely ,dp.we. trust that some abler and better writer will take up the subject which we have ventured to broach. ,