ARE YOU ONE OF THESE OSTRICH WOMEN?

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 33, 27 January 1939, Page 23

ARE YOU ONE OF THESE OSTRICH WOMEN?

Many People Have Their Heads In The Sand When Buying Corsets

By Our London Correspondent

N our frocks, hats, coats and coiffures, there’s a distinct return to the fashions of our erandmammas, And we’re all very happy: and complacent about it. Yet-a mere hint of returning to the same source for our undie fashions, and there’d be a riot! Particularly if our foundations were threatened. We shudder at the monstrosity of steel and bone of the ’eighties. Our modern foundations are such soft, supple, silken second skins. ‘\, Yet the Heavier woman is often "prejudiced against her new founda-

tions on account of their very lightmess and flexibility. It’s strange, but mahy women still believe that to be well corseted means to be uncomfortable. The heavier woman is so used to wearing corsets that squeeze her in above the hips, at the thighs, or back of the shoulders, that she feels any foundation which fails to do this is not "holding her in" sufficiently. And there we have the crux of the matter. A good corset, the modern foundation, does not squeeze the body anywhere-the resulting roll of displaced flesh is considered an_ unforgivable corseting fault. The modern cor-

set is not meant to hold you in. Its great purpose is to bring you out! (Oh, yes, in the right places.) It makes the most of your good points, and, by smoothing and redistributing your flesh, Glosses over the bad. Lastly, a corset is not meant to reduce weight (apart from its gentle massage-action)-and it is a pity, in the interests of health, that this fact is not better known. But, by redistributing the flesh more gracefully, it gives the illusion of a reduction of weight. If only the woman who can’t bring herself to believe in the effi‘ciency of the new foundations because of their lightness, would take a candid look at herself in that stiff old-type corset to which she clings so grimly! She could not fail to see the futility of pinching in the hips, waist or bosom that extra inch with stiff boning, only to have the surplus overflow the corset elsewhere! How ugly it looks. And how much more bulky her figure looks as a result. But it is so hard to convince this "ostrich" woman. She has her head stuck hard and fast in the sands of prejudice and habit. She has grown. up with the idea of a corset being something severe and uncomfortable, something to be "put up with’. in a good. cause; she cannot accept the new. Yet she accepts improvements in the rest. of her sphere — permanent waves, vacuum cleaners, washing machines. But only this ostrich attitude could account for the number of women who, in spite of the marvellous improvements in the fitting,

fabric and whole construction of the modern foundation, are still ta be seen very obviously badly and rigidly corseted. For it is easier now than it ever was, to give any figure-the slightest and the heaviest-beautiful lines; and good corseting has never eost so little as it does today. It is‘ only a matter of a change of attitude .. . to realise that the corset today has more subtle and persuasive ways of exercising centrol.