| A Word Edgewise by Mary Joe Clendenin |
 |
| A Word Edgewise by Mary Joe Clendenin |
|
THERE WAS A TIME WHEN BUXOM WAS BEAUTIFUL
I stepped on my bathroom scales the other day and it complained, "One at a time please."
With a sigh I stepped off and lectured myself about giving in to a big constant appetite. "You have about as much self-control as two-month-old child, self. Where were you when the determination was passed out? Off in a corner eating, no doubt."
Seeking conscience appeasement and distraction, I picked up a reference book which opened to a woman being laced into a corset. The article extoled the beauty of "buxom" women.
My trouble is, I was born in the wrong age! Before 1890's when the Gibson Girls and then the flappers of the 1920's frolicked across the fashion world, buxom women with hourglass figures, enhanced with corsets, were the sources of envy from less generously endowed women, and objects of admiration by all.
Lillian Russell, the adored beauty of 1870s weighed in at 186 pounds. Diamond Jim Brady was one of her admirers, along with hundreds of others. She and Diamond Jim went to eating establishments and ate huge servings of foods of their choice with never a concern for fat content or calories.
During Lil's day, a commentator said, "A well-developed bust, a tapering waist, and large hips are the combination of points recognized as a good figure." A contemporary beauty manual also claimed that "extreme thinness is a much more cruel enemy to beauty than extreme stoutness."
The hourglass figure, for the unfortunate thinner woman, could be augmented with ruffles and bustles in popular places, usually fitted to that torture garment, the corset. Remember that scene in Gone With the Wind where Scarlet is being laced into a corset to obtain a seventeen inch waist? The well-dressed woman wore the laced corset,and great circular skirts supported by many crinolines, before wire hoops were found to be less bulky--though they did tip to reveal ankles and more, occasionally. The fashionable woman was amazing to look at, but with constricted breathing might swoon if one looked too intently. The first step of first aide was to loosen the corset so that the poor woman could breathe.
Then came the drastic changes to flat fronts and rigid bustles before such women as Dr. Mary Walker rebelled at the awkward costumes. During the Civil War, following the role of her father who was a doctor and working along with him to help the wounded, Mary Walker was commissioned as an assistant surgeon with the rank of major. Working on the battle fields, she refused to dress in the proclaimed fashion. She wore the same uniform as the male officers: regulation trousers, overcoat, and round felt cap decorated with gold cord.
At the end of the war, the first woman to be awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor (it was later revoked), Mary refused to go back to women's fashions. She created her own outfits of bloomers (about the same garments as the knickers, pants gathered at the knee, popular with men) and frock coats and refused to bend to anyone's criticism--even shocking her family and fiance with this attire on her wedding day. When dressed up she always wore her medal of honor.
Dr. Mary Walker, although she lived and thrived during the time of the "buxom is beautiful" time, was not a large woman. Still, she was smart enough to earn a doctor's degree from Syracuse Medical College in New York in 1855, one of the first women to do so, and to know that large hooped skirts were impractical for women who worked.
When I began teaching in Cloudcroft, New Mexico, where we had over 60 inches of snow that year, 1957, girls were not allowed to wear pants to school. Neither were women teachers. When the girls complained about the cold, the superintendent told them they had never yet lost a teacher from the cold. We learned to wear wool skirts and fur-lined boots when we had to trek through the snow. Often it was easier to get to school by walking than by driving because of the ice and snow on the roads. That has nothing to do with size of body, but with fashion.
I heard last night on television that some scientists are now extoling near starvation diets for longer life. The report said that with less food one could live 120 years or longer. What for?
Many people, because they had no choice, have lived near the starvation level of food supply. Wonder why they didn't live longer.
Oh, well, as the old saying goes, what goes around comes around. Bigger sizes may yet be fashionable again. Little good that will do me. If I don't go on a starvation diet, I won't last that long--and if I do, I won't be in style anyway.