SHOULD WOMEN BE BEAUTIFUL?



Pretty women are going to have a hard time of it later on. Hitherto,
they have had things far too much their own way. In the future there
are going to be no pretty girls, for the simple reason there will be
no plain girls against which to contrast them. Of late I have done
some systematic reading of ladies' papers. The plain girl submits to
a course of "treatment." In eighteen months she bursts upon Society
an acknowledged beauty. And it is all done by kindness. One girl
writes:

"Only a little while ago I used to look at myself in the glass and
cry. Now I look at myself and laugh."

The letter is accompanied by two photographs of the young lady. I
should have cried myself had I seen her as she was at first. She was
a stumpy, flat-headed, squat-nosed, cross-eyed thing. She did not
even look good. One virtue she appears to have had, however. It was
faith. She believed what the label said, she did what the label told
her. She is now a tall, ravishing young person, her only trouble
being, I should say, to know what to do with her hair--it reaches to
her knees and must be a nuisance to her. She would do better to give
some of it away. Taking this young lady as a text, it means that the
girl who declines to be a dream of loveliness does so out of
obstinacy. What the raw material may be does not appear to matter.
Provided no feature is absolutely missing, the result is one and the
same.