Kabo Corsets (1895 advertisement)

If you appreciate a perfect fitting corset, give the Kabo 105 a trial. It's sure to please you. There is one DRESS STAY that won't melt apart, can't cut through the dress, don't stay bent. It is Ball's Peerless. A. SCHLANK, "Bee Hive," Fulton Street, Jamaica.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, June 14, 1895, p. 3.

Use Your Rouge Artistically, Girls!

1920

Then The Men'll Fall for You, Is Doctor's Advice

Girls who powder and paint have found a champion in Dr. Anna Dwyer of Chicago. She said girls must paint to attract attention and she could see no harm in it.

"But it must done artistically," she said.

Dr. Anna Dwyer is connected with the Chicago health department. She takes issue with Dr. Florence Meredith, the Boston woman who heads the Y. W. C. A. dress reform movement.

"Uncorseted women do not live any longer nor enjoy any better health than the smartly corseted, up-to-date modern city woman," she said.

"As to the facial make-up, which Dr. Florence Meredith claims make it impossible for even a person experienced in the ways of women, like myself, to pick out the good from the bad, all I can say is only the good Lord Himself can tell the good from the bad these days."

And then she defended the girl with paint on her face.

"It is every girl's privilege to paint her face if she likes. Those who do, attract attention, and those who don't, do not, I notice. But it should be done artistically.

"Silk stockings and low shoes are neither objectionable nor dangerous, and the modern corset is quite sensible, to my mind," she said.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Jan. 3, 1920, p. 3.

Women Becoming Manly, Men Effeminate, Foppish

1910

Woman Developing Strong Arm

While Men Are Changing to Effeminate, Foppish Persons

Cambridge, Mass., Nov. 28 — Dr. Dudley A. Sargent, a celebrated authority on physical development, declares that woman is fast assuming the physical proportions and mental characteristics of man. Dr. Sargent is director of the Harvard and Sargent gymnasiums in this city. He cites from a model of a composite woman, molded from measurements made from 10,000 women, all taken prior to the year 1890. On the other hand, he avers that man is inclining toward effeminacy.

"Although I've no actual figures to verify the statement," Dr. Sargent says, "I know for a fact that the women of today are more mannish than the women of that time. Women, in the savage state, are so like men in form that it is well nigh impossible to tell them apart. Then, as civilization progressed, their especially feminine characteristics became accentuated, until the exaggeration was almost painful to look at.

"Then the pendulum began to swing the other way. Women are again beginning to look and be more like men. Great changes in this direction have been made since the molding of that statue. The women from whom the measurements for it were taken were different in conformation compared with those of today. The composite was the extreme type of femininity. She was woman overwomanized. Her hips and all the pelvic portion were overlarge. Her waist was oversmall. Her feet were undeveloped. So were her back and neck.

"Since that time her physique has been thoroughly made over. It is approaching that of man. The sloping shoulders of her grandmother's time have disappeared. They are no longer in fashion. In their place we find well-knit, athletic shoulders, broad ones. Her back, likewise, is better developed. Her hips are not so large as they once were. The entire pelvic region has decreased in size and the result has been an enlargement of the waist. The small waist is a thing of the past. Her neck is thicker and more muscular; her limbs more smoothly developed; her hands and feet are larger in every respect. Her chest has been said to be flatter. I should hardly wish to endorse that last opinion. It is true, however, that her chest may appear flatter, because I am glad to say the corset, which formerly forced it upward, has of late, been somewhat modified.

"Another reason for the change in woman's physique is that within the past 10 years women have done a great deal more in the way of athletics than they did formerly. Golf, tennis, running and swimming have done much to improve woman's physical development.

"It is a rule that one may take few exceptions to, that if a woman devotes herself to the activities of a man, there is bound to be a loss of sex. This approximation of man's physique is, from an anthropological point of view, a bad thing. It is to be hoped that men and women do not grow to be more alike than they are today. The same may be said of men. From the overdeveloped Sandow, man has changed to the effeminate and the foppish being. The assimilating of the sexes by each other is a possibility to be decried."

—Olean Evening Times, Olean, NY, Nov. 29, 1910, p. 2.