THE PERFECT WOMAN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 May 1938, Page 4

THE PERFECT WOMAN

MASCULINE VIEWS. Men and women from many different walks of life gathered at one of Foyle’s literary luncheons in London recently to discuss “the perfect woman.” The men did most of the talking, the women listened and laughed, and all that was decided was that no two men had the same idea of perfection. The chairman was the bluff, genial showman, Mr Charles B. Cochran, and he invited representatives of the stage, art, the church and sport to define the perfect woman, Mr Cochran expressed sympathy with those faced with a definition requiring so much tact and delicacy. Speaking for art, Mr C. R. W. Nevinson said that in history the inspiration of artists had been not women but first food, then fear, then religion. Sex and woman only entered in after thousands of years, and, indeed, no one would have noticed her but for the Egyptians, who gave her a certain prominence in art. “Woman in art always shows that art is getting degenerate,” was his most crushing blow, but one ray of hope he held out to womankind —“The present craze for slimness, due to the magnification of the cinema picture, will be reversed by television, which minimises the subject. Plump women will then be in demand.”

The Rev. Desmond Morse-Boycott said it was good theology that Eve was never perfect but only innocent. There had been only one perfect woman since the dawn of history, one whose’praise was on the lips of millions today, who was clothed with the sun and moon and around whose head was a crown of 12 stars.

On behalf of the stage, Mr Will Fyffe said amid laughter that he could have spoken more easily of the ideal man, but that might have seemed boastful. “Were my wife here, my job would be simple,” he said, tactfully. “I need only have said. -Darling, stand up!’ ” Commander C. B. Fry, commenting that both he and Mr Cochran should have their initials after their names instead of before, gave the sportsman’s point of view and said. “If she be not fair to me, what care I how fair she be?"