WOMEN MAY ALL BE BEAUTIFUL
Nothing is more difficult to define than beauty. It is not something
absolute, like truth; it differs according to times, countries, races,
and individual tastes. Greek beauty is not Parisian beauty, English
beauty is pretty well the opposite of Italian beauty.
A European beauty might strike a Chinaman as very ugly, and a Chinese
beauty would find no admirer in Europe, except, perhaps, among blase
people with the most fastidious tastes and ever in search of novelty.
The Buddha of the Hindoos has nothing in common with the Jupiter of the
Greeks. Ancient art differs entirely from modern art.
In Antiquity, beauty consists in the harmony of the proportions, the
purity of the lines, the nobility of form and attitude, the sobriety of
the figure, and the coldness of the expression. In modern times, beauty
consists in gracefulness, piquancy, intelligence, sentiment, vivacity,
and exuberance of form.
But there are two kinds of beauty in women: that which is natural to
them, and that which they can acquire by carefully studying what suits
them best to wear, and how they can use to advantage their style of
face and figure.
I have seen women absolutely transformed by the hands of a skilful
dressmaker or a clever hairdresser.
The natural beauty is that happy ensemble of lines and expression which
attract and charm the eyes. It is not at all indispensable that this
ensemble should be harmonious. On the contrary, contrasts are often less
cold and monotonous than perfect harmony, and the statuesque beauty
generally leaves us unmoved.
The woman who looks amiable and cheerful is naturally beautiful--far
more so than a woman with irreproachable sculptural outlines and
features so regular that she makes you wish she had some redeeming
defect or other. Perfection was attractive in ancient Greece; it is not
now.
Perfection seldom looks amiable and bright, and modern beauty must look
intelligent--brilliant even. Ancient Greece would not have looked at a
turned-up nose; but such a nose denotes gaiety, wit, spirit of repartee,
and we like it.
I hope I shall not offend that most talented of French actresses, Madame
Rejane, or her admirers, by saying that Athens would have refused to
look at her; but the Parisians, the descendants and successors of the
Attic Greeks, love her, with her big mouth, square when it laughs, and
her turned-up nose. To them she is the embodiment of liveliness, wit,
and gaiety.
A small, piquante brunette, with small, keen eyes, thick lips, thin,
alert; a blonde dishevelled, like a spaniel, with glorious form, will
excite admiration--both are beautiful.
But the other beauty, the one that can be obtained of art, is at the
disposal of every woman. In fact, the woman who knows how to put on her
dress and do her hair well, who has on a becoming hat, pretty shoes, and
neat gloves, who has good taste in furniture, who speaks pleasantly,
smiles cheerfully and good-naturedly, who has elegance of manners and a
pretty voice, who has a bright conversation--that woman will be declared
pretty, even beautiful, far more readily and unanimously than the real
beauty, one who fails to pay attention to her dress and manners, who has
no consciousness of her power and her value, and who constantly forgets
that good surroundings are to her what a handsome frame is to a picture.
Practically every woman can obtain this result, and that is why I have
entitled this chapter 'Women may All be Beautiful.'