Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 October 1885 — The Perfect Human Figure. [ARTICLE]

The Perfect Human Figure.

Baron von Humboldt, who had studied men and women in every quarter of the habitable globe, used to say that the notion that the female figure was of better proportions and more graceful outline than that of the male was a delusion. Women did not believe it, averred the great scientist, and men only said so out of natural gallantry. Humboldt was right on a great many points concerning which his views were scouted by the wise men of his day, and perhaps he was equally correct in thus attributing superior physical beauty to men. But since his time nobody has ventured to urge or defend his theory, and it has naturally fallen into disrepute. Besides, the modern world really has. no use for “pretty men” as such. They may be counter-jumpers and animated tailors’ blocks, and infest at will the public promenades and places of general resort, but the present masculine fashion favors the strong, square-built, quickwitted, and agile fellow who never thinks for an instant whether he conforms to the model of the Apollo Belvedere or not. With the softer sex the question of form is quite another affair. The possibilities of dress have been developed to such an extent that within reasonable limitations a woman may take on pretty much whatever outward shape seems best and most becoming for her. While the creations of the modiste have stimulated a taste for the beautiful, they have ministered also to the love of admiration and harmless instinctive vanity appertaining to every feminine nature. They have also Created ideals of contour that are decidedly at variance with classical ideas of perfection; and these departures from the antique standard have been to many theorists and a few otherwise sensible women a source of profound disquiet. There has been, it is affirmed, a departure from the “classic figure” that is as disfiguring as it is reprehensible ; and in many quarters are pleadings more or less cogent for the return to the lines of beauty wrought by Phidias and Cleomene3 long before physical distortion became a fashionable art. American maids and matrons have thus been led to study the requirements and measurements of the perfect female figure, with results, if current draperies correctly indicate, altogether distasteful to the classicists, who point with pride to the master works of the ancient sculptors as embodying the beautiful in feminine contour. A living counterpart of the Venus de Medici would be less than five feet in height, while wearing a No. 25 corset and No. 7 shoe. This, to the woman of to-day, would mean hopeless clumsiness. The Popular Science Monthly, in a recent issue, descends to particulars, and affirms that to meet the requirements of a classic figure the proper dimensions should be: height, 5 feet 41 inches; bust, 32 inches; waist, 24 inches; armpit to waist, 9 inches. This is further improved upon by giving the proportions of a “queenly” figure, thus; height, 5 feet s inches; bust, 31 inches; waist, 261 inches; over the Lips 36 inches. These figures are interesting only as they illustrate the vagaries and contortions of the purely scientific mind when floundering thrrugh tire uncongenial realm of taste. It will be difficult to persuade ladies of an inquiring turn that the scientific constructor of these classic proportions has not been endeavoring to perpetrate a solemn joke upon the select circle of literary females whom he addresses. The “queenliness” of a tall woman with a hollow chest and an exceedingly thick waist is an attribute likely to be discovered only by an observer whose head is perpetually among the stars. — Philadelphia Record.