Idle Ideas in 1905 | Page 7

Can
be funny in the morning."

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.
Arrived at years of discretion, the maiden proceeds to choose the style
of beauty she prefers. Will she be a Juno, a Venus, or a Helen? Will she
have a Grecian nose, or one tip-tilted like the petal of a rose? Let her
try the tip-tilted style first. The professor has an idea it is going to be
fashionable. If afterwards she does not like it, there will be time to try
the Grecian. It is difficult to decide these points without experiment.
Would the lady like a high or a low forehead? Some ladies like to look
intelligent. It is purely a matter of taste. With the Grecian nose, the low
broad forehead perhaps goes better. It is more according to precedent.
On the other hand, the high brainy forehead would be more original. It
is for the lady herself to select.
We come to the question of eyes. The lady fancies a delicate blue, not
too pronounced a colour--one of those useful shades that go with
almost everything. At the same time there should be depth and passion.
The professor understands exactly the sort of eye the lady means. But it
will be expensive. There is a cheap quality; the professor does not
recommend it. True that it passes muster by gaslight, but the sunlight
shows it up. It lacks tenderness, and at the price you can hardly expect
it to contain much hidden meaning. The professor advises the melting,
Oh-George-take-me-in-your-arms- and-still-my-foolish-fears brand. It
costs a little more, but it pays for itself in the end.
Perhaps it will be best, now the eye has been fixed upon, to discuss the
question of the hair. The professor opens his book of patterns. Maybe
the lady is of a wilful disposition. She loves to run laughing through the
woods during exceptionally rainy weather; or to gallop across the
downs without a hat, her fair ringlets streaming in the wind, the old
family coachman panting and expostulating in the rear. If one may trust
the popular novel, extremely satisfactory husbands have often been
secured in this way. You naturally look at a girl who is walking through
a wood, laughing heartily apparently for no other reason than because it
is raining--who rides at stretch gallop without a hat. If you have
nothing else to do, you follow her. It is always on the cards that such a
girl may do something really amusing before she gets home. Thus
things begin.
To a girl of this kind, naturally curly hair is essential. It must be the sort

of hair that looks better when it is soaking wet. The bottle of stuff that
makes this particular hair to grow may be considered dear, if you think
merely of the price. But that is not the way to look at it. "What is it
going to do for me?" That is what the girl has got to ask herself. It does
not do to spoil the ship for a ha'porth of tar, as the saying is. If you are
going to be a dashing, wilful beauty, you must have the hair for it, or