Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 January 1911 — RUINING OUR WOMEN [ARTICLE]

RUINING OUR WOMEN

John W. Alexander Adds His Testimony to Dr. Sargent's.

American Woman's Figure Is Becoming Mord'jMascullne In Line Every Day—Outdoor Exercises and Life Blamed.

New York.: —-If the American woman persists In her undue athletic sports, there will soon be little difference between the masculine and the feminine figure. So says John W. Alexander, president of the National Academy of Design. In this he agrees with Dr. Dudley Sargent, of Harvard, who said about the same thing. Mr. Alexander, one of America’s foremost portrait painters has had ample opportunity to study women of every country and clime. In his home, at 116 West Sixty-fifth street, Mr. Alexander declared that the American woman’s figure is becoming more masculine in line every day. "Just where the beauty of Buch unnatural development comes in, I don’t see,” said the painter. “I don’t see why any woman should be proud of losing that which constitutes her greatest charm, her womanly bearing and figure. But that is just what the American women of all classes seem determined to do. “In no other country In the world do you see such mascullnelike figures ar the American women have. In France the woman is the personification of grace. In Germany the woman Is not so graceful, perhaps, but she has that motherly bearing which gives her a lovableness that is not often found among our women. In England

the stateliness and dignities of the women dissipate the slightest suggestion of the masculine. “It has only been in the last few years that this change has been so decidedly marked’among cur women. "If she continues her violent exercises and outdoor life, in a few years she will be so manlike In figure that she will look ridiculous In woman’s attire.

“Up to a certain point this outdoor life and development is excellent. It gives the girl all that women of this country have been distinguished for abroad —a free, easy carriage, and an Independence in movement and action that at once Inspires confidence in her ability to meet a crisis. But this point has been overstepped and she is becoming anything but Interesting. “Take for instance, a woman who plays golf to the extreme. She has

developed a large, muscular waist and a large, heavy arm. "It 1b not an even training of all the muscles that the women are getting today, but an overdevelopment of some one set which will, in time, make them look more or less deformed.

“Athletic work Is making women flat chested, lgrgs walsted, small hipped. This Is the figure of a man, and that Is one reason why many artists doing work along classical lines find it difficult to 86010*0 a model.”

Doctor, Sargent’s views, which brought out Mr. Alexander’s are to the effect that the feminine type is fast becoming masculine. The change, Doctor Sargent said, has come in the last twenty years. Women in the savage state, he added, were bo like men in form that it was well-nigh impossible to tell them apart Then, as civilization progressed, their especial feminine characteristics developed. Now the tendency is back to the savage type.