Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 June 1886 — Don’t Do It. [ARTICLE]

Don’t Do It.

A paragraph in a fashion paper states that tight lacing is coming into fashion once more. This means, if true, that blind vanity and a diseased imagination are again combining to lead women to make guys and martyrs of themselves. History repeats itself, we know, but it is said to contemplate that foolishness does not teach a lasting lesson. The ways of the heathen Chinee and the fashionable woman are peculiar. Not many seasons ago “wasp waists,” to use a then current expression, wqje the proper thing, but the fashion was of comparatively short duration. To be told that there is to be a return to that particular style of dressing makes one wonder if our civilization is all it is boasted to be, and pity the poor creatures Who are silly enough to countenance such a fashion. In the first paragraph the. terms “blind vanity” and “a diseased imagination” were used in the following sense: It is nothing else than blind vanity that makes any woman willing to compass her waist so that itwill appear remarkably slight in comparison with the breadth of her shoulders, for such a proceeding cannot but invariably be far from comfortable, to say nothing of the permanent physical injuries which are almost sure to result. Then it is nothing less than a diseased imagination which causes women to believe that those Of the other sex admire a female figure whose waist measures less than twenty inches with shoulders measuring in the neighborhood of thirty-five. A fashion which dictates that the shoulders should be artificially rounded out and broadened and the waist diminished one-third in circumference, produces a result neither symmetrical, graceful, nor pleasing. In fact, in each particular the opposite result is true. Possibly the muscular ability of the maid who tightly laces her mistress and the nerve of the mistress in convincing herself that she feels very comfortable under such discipline may cause a temporary feeling of admiration to possess the masculine mind, but nothing more. The effect in toto is far from inspiring. We know of several cases, indeed, where young women have stood in their own light, matrimonially speaking, because they affected this fashion. Y oun g men to whom they appear in every other respect worthy of a life long devotion turned their attention elsewhere, departing with pity, not love, in their eyes when they realized that an apparently sensible and a truly accomplished “young person” of the female persuasion would habitually make a contortionist of herself to please Dame Fash- / ion, and, perhaps, to excel her companions in brevity of waist measure. If the ambition of such is to make true the phrase, “Frailty, thy name is woman,” they admirably succeed; but “a perfect woman, nobly planned,” is a hollow mockery under such circumstances. Both aesthetically and physically considered, then, the fashion of tight lacing is not a success, and should not be countenanced or adopted by women who have their own welfare at heart or wish the admiration of men. We hope the paragraph which inspired this gentle tirade may prove nnprophetic, for we wish to be spared the spectacle of women resembling in shape the purses our grandmothers carried. Boston Times.