We'll waste no time in proving that women, from the cradle to the grave, at all hours and all ages, are sincerely interested in their personal appearance.
No man should object to this--the constitutional guarantee referring to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness covers the ground fully.
But it is not enough for men NOT TO OBJECT to woman's various innocent vanities.
Every man should be delighted that women are vain. Each man should do what he can to keep the vanity alive.
FOR WOMAN'S VANITY, DEARLY BELOVED, IS THE ONE AND INDISPENSABLE PRESERVER OF HER HEALTH.
A woman cannot be pretty, according to her own notions, unless HEALTHY.
If too fat, she is not pretty--and she is miserable until, through self-control, she gets thin.
If too thin, she is not pretty. At present she has a crazy sort of idea that to be "skinny" is to be attractive. That is a passing delusion. In the long run women realize that there is nothing beautiful about a female living skeleton, and they strive through normal living to become normal.
Above all, no woman can have a good complexion unless she have good health and live normally. This one absorbing question of complexion does more for woman's health; it gives us more strong mothers, and more sensible girls, than all the preachings, beseechings, prayers and expostulations of all the world's male advisers.
A woman's instinct is to eat buckwheat cakes, adding boiling hot coffee and iced water. She likes to eat candy between meals, and her idea of a fine luncheon is lobster salad and ice cream. But small spots appear. Those fine pink cheeks get too pink or too pale, and sensible eating is adopted as a life rule.
Even the hideous corset squeezing is counteracted by the power of complexion. Woman likes to look like a wasp, and if she could she would move her poor system all out of place for the sake of a waist hideously small.
But, providentially, a waist squeezed too mercilessly gives a bright pink tip to the end of the nose; and for the sake of the color of that nose-tip the poor waist gets a rest--the corset is let out.
It cannot be denied that among idle, nervous women to-day there is a tendency to take stimulants to excess, and even to smoke abominable cigarettes.
Alcohol, fortunately, ruins the complexion. And for the sake of their looks women often deny themselves and show a strength of resolution that would not be called forth by any moral appeal.
Cigarettes in short order make the face sallow, spoil the shape of the mouth, make the eyes heavy, fill the hair with permanently unpleasant nicotine suggestions, develop a mustache--and women are cured of cigarette smoking by a look in the glass, when they could not be cured by tearful appeals of the wisest philosophers.
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Do not, therefore, O men, despise the vanity of women. Praise and cherish it rather. Be grateful that nature works in a wonderful way through the power of attraction, making woman do for good looks' sake that which is most important to her welfare.
If you want to cure your wife or some other female relative of lacing, don't moralize. Say to her six or seven times:
"Isn't the end of your nose a little red?"
Should she act in any way unwisely, staying up too late, living foolishly, trying the silly and unwomanly habit of cigarette smoking, don't criticise the habit.
Criticise her complexion, or the look of her eyes, or her general lack of youthfulness. She will soon be cured, if you can follow this advice astutely.
[The end]
Arthur Brisbane's essay: Woman's Vanity Is Useful