Slenderness

“ Work for slenderness and becomingness. Avoid all 47neck lines that go around or that are conspicuously colored. A cream collar is always better than a snow white one and a soft piqué or linen collar is better than a starched one. Remember that long string ribbon ties can be real friends if you will let them. Tailor your collars or use soft lace that is not baby looking. We big folks must always keep away from babyishness, must learn to stand on our own two feet and look straight ahead toward the goal of slenderness. ”

“ For example, just as white shoes make large feet look much larger, so do certain lines and colors make a large figure look a great deal larger, while correct lines and colors and subtle touches give the effect of slenderness, youth and grace.
Every stout woman has, some time in her experience, come by chance upon a dress which seemed to make her look more slender 17and younger, and she has worn and worn that dress almost to shreds, hating to part with it because there was no telling when she would find another one to give that same effect. ”

“ Though the subject on which I propose to address to you a few observations hardly concerns a man, I hope you will allow me a little space in your excellent journal to express my views upon it. I have been much interested by reading the correspondence on the subject of slender waists, and the means used for attaining them. Now, there can be no doubt that gentlemen admire those figures the most which have attained the greatest slenderness. I think there is no more deplorable sight than a large and clumsy waist ”

“ But by stretching an object it is diminished in breadth and depth, while it increases in length; hence it becomes thinner; so that the Mind readily makes the transition from the primitive conception of stretch to that of thinness, indicated by the English word, and by the Sanskrit tanu, and the Latin tener, tenuis. Thinness, again, is allied to slimness, slenderness, fineness, etc.; ideas which are involved in the conception of delicate, and furnish an easy transition to it. ”

“ Observe how powerfully the expression of the face is affected by the asymmetry between the upper and lower rows of teeth. The position of the eyes at equal distances on each side of the median line of the face—the nose—might seem to be indispensable for beauty, and yet how very rarely are the eyes placed with perfect symmetry! The wonder is, that these asymmetries of the face should be, after all, so slight as they are, considering how serious are the impediments placed in its way by the requirements of bodily growth. ”

“ Such bodies appear cold to the touch, are without hair, and are fat; their complexion, like their hair, being tawny. But when the coldness is great, they are pale, leaden-coloured, and have small veins; and if lean, this does not proceed from nature, but habit. The dry is harder and more slender than the temperate—the hardness, indeed, being inseparable from the dry temperament; but leanness not only follows the congenital temperaments, but also those which are acquired by long habit. It is a mark of hardness when the body is rendered unapt for motion, dry and parched, by drying applications. ”

“ The picture was as perfect as when I had had the first glimpse of it, only her face had grown, if possible, more charming after my renewed scrutiny of it.
There are faces that grow upon you the longer and the oftener you look upon them; faces that seem to have a veil over them, which melts away like the thin, fine mist of the morning upon the cliffs, until they flash out in their full color and beauty. ”

“ The skin becomes dry and hot; an irresistible lassitude is felt, accompanied with headache; the face and hair are red with sand, which, to complete the discomfort, finds its way even under one's clothing. ”

“ The rigidity of the limbs, the haggard cheeks with strongly-projecting bones, the staring, half-sunken eyes, the lifeless skin, the colourless face with bloodless lips, the emaciated body with its ribs standing out, have all been set down with relentless accuracy. ”

“ Beauty, however, is no more; form and shape have disappeared; the plumpness which supported the reliefs has abandoned them; the sinkings and wrinkles are multiplied; the skin has lost its polish; color and freshness have fled for ever.
These injuries of time, it has been observed, commonly begin by the abdomen, which loses its polish and its firmness; the hemispheres of the bosom no longer sustain themselves; the clavicles [Pg 165] project; the neck becomes meager; all the reliefs are effaced; all the forms are altered from roundness and softness to angularity and hardness. ”

“ She has never weighed less than one hundred and forty-five since, and, as she is five feet eight, her one hundred and forty-five pounds brought her a new symmetry which, with her high-bred face, transformed the waxen invalid into an attractive beauty. ”

“ Behind the fleshly covering of the body, within the very skin and bones it seemed, there flowed with steady splendor an effect of charging new vitality that had an air of radiating from her face and figure with the glow and rush of increased life. ”

“ Looked at in itself, each fleck is ugly, a greyish patch which effaces the colour it rests on. Yet the brilliant beauty of these fruits is largely dependent on those flecks of light. So it is with some little mole on the body of a beautiful woman, or a mutinous irregularity in the curve of her mouth, or some freak in the distribution of her hair. ”

“ The body and limbs have therefore perfect liberty to develope themselves to the utmost degree of perfection, and you see what beauty of form prevails here. No deformed limbs, no crooked backs, no dyspepsia, no disturbance of the functions of any of the organs are to be found in this subaqueous abode. The smooth hairless skin is eminently fitted for gliding uninterruptedly through the water; the equable pressure of the fluid medium in which we float renders it a matter of perfect indifference whether our head or our heels are uppermost. ”

“ The sweat drops that bespeak the heart's agony stand forth; and with true instinct on the brow, in which the immovable bone constitutes the determining feature, precisely at the point where nose, eyes, and forehead coalesce, and the life of mind and heart is concentrated and emphasized, we find that just one or two indications of skin-folds and muscles, unable to be distorted to any great extent, are suffered pre-eminently to bear and express in tension this accumulated weight of agony. ”

“ Nothing in his heads is overlooked—the finest lines and wrinkles, the faintly mottled surface of the cheeks, the black specks scattered over the nose, the bluish flush of imperceptible veins meandering under the skin, nor the reflection of objects in the vicinity on the eye. ”

“ The quality of voluminousness exists in all sensations, just as intensity does. We call the reverberations of a thunder-storm more voluminous than the squeaking of a slate-pencil; the entrance into a warm bath gives our skin a more massive feeling than the prick of a pin; a little neuralgic pain, fine as a cobweb, in the face, seems less extensive than the heavy soreness of a boil or the vast discomfort of a colic or a lumbago ”

“ In like manner, it is easy to see that the roundness and the hardness are forms of our consciousness, belonging to the groups which we call sensations of sight and touch. If the surface of the cornea were cylindrical, we should have a very different notion of a round body from that which we possess now; and if the strength of the fabric, and the force of the muscles, of the body were increased a hundredfold, our marble would seem to be as soft as a pellet of bread crumbs. ”

“ Like the air of the desert it so rapidly, so instantaneously evaporates the imperceptible perspiration that the skin beneath your clothes as well as that of your face develops a new sensation. It has ceased to be merely a tough, half-dead integument, whose function is just to protect you from external rubs. ”

“ He would look at the angle of incidence made by the sun's rays on one side of his nose and then at the angle of reflection on the other, and find himself lost in amazement that anything so thin could produce so dark a shadow. ”

“ As the distance between them decreases, the eyes of each seem to flash more fiercely, whilst the crest of hair upon the forehead is drawn rapidly up and down, with a twitching motion, by the angry contraction of the facial muscles. ”

“ If we imagine an addition of dimensions to the head, we shall immediately conceive it would only deform—if to the hands or feet, we are sensible of something gross and ungenteel—if to the whole lengths of the arms, we feel they would be dangling and awkward—if, by an addition of length or breadth to the body, we know it would appear heavy and clumsy—there remains then only the neck, with the legs and thighs to speak of ”

“ Wrinkles.—Many influences of the body on the mind group themselves in the muscles of expression around the eyes. Wrinkles, for instance, are originally a habit of mind, and then the emphasis of this, in the muscles of the face, is reflected back to deepen still further the dejection or nervous unrest that originally causes them. It is surprising to see what an influence it has on patients who go round much with wrinkled foreheads, to have them give over the practice and discipline themselves to appear with uncorrugated superciliary muscles. ”

“ The skin, especially of the face, having been subjected to extreme tension, becomes foldy and wrinkly. It has lost its youthful elasticity on account of insufficient and unhealthy blood circulation as well as lack of light and sun. ”

“ At this point I rebelled—I ground my teeth resolutely—my face flushed to the temples—I could willingly have stricken that audacious scrutinizer in the face with my clinched hand, and he knew it! How coarse coarseness makes us, even when most disinclined to it naturally! ”

“ I call it extreme hot, when the strength fails, a disposition to faint comes on, a straitness is found in the temples, as if a small cord was drawn tight around the head, the voice impaired, the skin dry, and the head seems more than ordinary large and light. ”

“ Use increases, disuse diminishes the size of an organ. Hence for the same reason that our jaws have become less projecting and heavy, our forehead has lost its backward slope and become straight and noble, owing to the growth of the brain. And similarly with other peculiarities of the face, indicating the connection between mental refinement and physical beauty. ”

“ But permanent dimples interrupt the regular gradation of the beauty-curve, and too often indicate that the plump roundness, so fascinating in a woman’s face, has passed the line which indicates corpulence and obliterates the delicate lines of expression. ”

“ She saw how no wind left emptiness where it had been, but how the elastic tissue thinned out, spread, gathered together, ran here and there so that no outflow was without its inevitable influence of contraction: the whole sphere of air was a medley of pattern, always rhythmic and interchanging. ”

“ Round or oval marginal curvature, however, is not the only condition of beauty in an eyelid. The surface, too, must be kept in a tense, well-rounded condition. Sunken, hollow eyes displease us not only because they suggest disease and age, but because they destroy the smooth surface and curvature of the eyelids. ”

“ The head and belly become too large in proportion to the other parts; the face appears full, and the complexion florid. Afterwards the bones begin to be affected, especially in the more soft and spungy parts. ”

“ If the word may be applied to things so lovely and delicate, symmetry is carried even to caricature in the details of this girlish face. Of course the face, so delicately girlish, is deficient in the strength, the indications of force, active or latent, always to be looked for and, in some degree, invariably discernible in the countenance of a man of mark. ”

“ An ill-shaped mouth, indifferent teeth, a broad forehead and large limbs are the only defects the severest criticism can discover; while her hair, her height, her movements, her shoulders, her waist, are all unexceptionable. ”

“ You see everything in wrong proportion as if you looked into a silvered globe such as once stood on that pedestal. Be at ease. Assure yourself. Though your nose may look like the proboscis of an elephant it is moderate in size—quite small. ”

“ If we look for a minute or two into this play of the expanding curves and then turn our eyes to the face of a neighbor, we see at once how the features of the face begin to shrink. It looks as if the whole face were elastically drawn toward its center. ”

“ A meagre, skinny arm is objectionable not only because it offends against all the conditions of Beauty—plump roundness, softness, fresh colour, smoothness, gradual tapering to the wrist—but because it is associated with the aspect of old age and disease ”

“ In the human figure there underlies the curved outline a certain element of rigidity and straightness, indicating strength in the supporting limbs and spine. Whenever firmness is required, there must be a solid structure, and straightness of form is a frequent accompaniment of solidity. The straight nose and the flat brow are subsidiary to the movement and the stability of the face. ”

“ A very careful study, therefore, of the optical illusions in this chapter will repay you many times in the matter of line, cut and pattern of every dress, wrap, hat, and pair of shoes that you buy. You must see that the facts of illusion may either work to produce an appearance of bigness or one of smallness. 37Every suggestion in this book is written with the idea of applying these essential principles of optical illusion to your dress—of producing in every case the slenderest possible effects. ”

“ Their close curls, their elegantly set heads, column-like necks, straight noses, short, curled lips, firm chins, deep chests, light flanks, large muscles, small joints, were finer than anything we ever see. It may well be questioned whether the human shape will ever present itself again in a race of such perfect symmetry. ”

“ The eyelids and jaw relaxed, the eyes became filmy, and the whole form subsided into the corner in a shrunken heap, with the strange gelatinous limpness of a body that is dead as a whole, while its tissues are still alive. ”