The Sagging Sisterhood

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 18, 1910

The Sagging Sisterhood

AGE has been defined as simply a condition of the tissues. Sagging is even more simple—it is a habit of the tissues. Like age, it may begin young, or be indefinitely deferred by its would-not-be subject. Some women’s mouths sag at seventeen, while some are firm and sweet at seventy. Wrinkles and will are intimately connected. The will to be droopy and discontented is a mental make-up pencil, drawing telltale lines around the nose and mouth, and furrowing the forehead before the first gray hair comes hastening to its aid.

Also the mind may sag at any age—and frequently does sag by twenty-five.

The sagging sisterhood contains many feeble young novices, though it is recruited most largely, perhaps, by those in the thirties. The Rubicon, for many women, seems to come there. They halt, demur, and give up. Once they used to take to caps. Now they often take to semi-invalidism and overeating. Mental flabbiness grows on them, never to be shaken off. In any car, in any restaurant, in any department store, the saggers may be observed in force—so much so, that to look over a car-seat full of women, and see one middle-aged face whose mouth turns up instead of down at the corners, is an encouraging surprise.

Nevertheless, sagging is unnecessary at any age. It is a foolish habit. The health specialists who first started out to preach the gospel of keeping the chest well up and the head held high were experts. They struck straight at the root of half of the invalidism of a droopy woman—her habit of letting herself sag, of sitting in a heap, of standing in a way that is relaxed and ungraceful.

They have cured hundreds,—let us hope they will cure their ten thousands,—but there are hundreds more every day who need their invigorating advice. To pull up the chest, lift the head, draw in the chin, step out, and keep going, is good doctrine, profitable for all and positively life-saving for some. When it becomes habit not to droop, but to stand lithely erect, years and ailments will roll off the straightened shoulders with an alacrity that seems miraculous.

Poise means power; sag means weakness. A careful examination of one’s mouth in the glass, and a definite resolve to pull up its corners therewith, may mean the reinvigoration of a home, the rebuilding of household ideals that had relaxed almost beyond repair. The habit of keeping at one’s best is the most constructive of habits. One’s level best soon turns out to be a rising level, then foothills, then peaks one held as beyond endeavor. The sagging sisterhood dwell forever in the valley. It would be sad—if they couldn’t help it. But they can!—Harper’s Bazar.