Forty Ideal Age for Women

1920

English Artist Sweeps Away Time-Honored Ideas Having to Do With Spinsterhood

There is a flurry among English spinsters. A prominent artist has come to the conclusion that a girl of forty should be man's ideal. He sweeps away all the time-honored rubbish about spinsters at the age of forty being mostly interested in eats and canaries. Here is what he has to say about the new old girl.

"The ideal age for a woman from the viewpoint of the man who studies the sex as an artist is forty years. The woman of forty is at the perfection of her beauty and has attained a settled mentality which she did not possess as a girl in her teens, or as a young woman in her twenties and thirties. At forty she is an ideal companion, pleasantly matured, tolerant and understanding. Only the ignoramuses in life find joy in the society of young girls or undeveloped women."

During the war and since many women of the so-called "sweet-and-forty" age got married, a considerable number of them widows. This has led to frequent lamentations by younger women that, with the huge number of unmarried beauties about, it is unpatriotic for Cupid to show such favoritism for widows and spinsters.