Here I want to group the outrages which woman perpetrates upon her
beautiful body.
To begin at the top, she almost never permits her hair an
opportunity to display its natural beauty. At the present moment, a
mass of Japanese bark, or false hair, or some other foreign stuff,
full of uncleanness, is piled upon the top of the head, while her
own natural hair is twisted, and turned, and pinned, and broken, and
ruined in doing subordinate, menial service to the dirty foreign
intruder. Besides this, her hair is bedaubed with nameless and dirty
greases and oils.
I asked one of the largest retail druggists in this city, "What one
article, or line of goods, do you sell most of?"
He replied, without a moment's hesitation, "Preparations for the
complexion." These preparations have for their bases three or four
deadly poisons. Thousands upon thousands of bottles and boxes are
used by the women of Boston every year.
Those glands which, in the economy of nature, are appointed to the
most sacred and precious of maternal duties and privileges, are, by
the pressure and heat of large artificial pads, almost uniformly
ruined. A dressmaker assured me that she very rarely made a dress in
which the bust was not padded. The heat and pressure soon spoil the
glands.
She bores holes in her ears, and hangs in various trinkets.
In this place I shall not speak at length of that culminating
outrage upon woman's body, known as lacing; (not in your case, dear
reader, of course, but among your friends.) Look about you, and see
what a hideous distortion of the beautiful Greek Slave you see in
living figures.
Below the waist there are enormous paddings, which heat and injure
the spine.
Below the knee, a ligature, seriously checking the circulation of
the feet.
Reaching the feet, we find in the fashionable shoe an ingenious
torture. What with the narrow soles and the high heels, the foot is
rendered almost helpless, while the ankles are made so weak, that
"turning the ankle" is a common occurrence.
In this category I have by no means included all the body tortures
in which women indulge; but I have included all that can be properly
spoken of in a work which is designed for general reading. Modesty
forbids the mention of two or three methods of body torture, in
which fashionable women very generally indulge.