Plain Words About Dress—The Sins of Fashion.
It would seem as if women in almost all ages had been hampered, or had hampered themselves, with garments not at all fitted to give comfort and health. The most extravagant, ungainly, ill fitting and unhealthy costumes have succeeded each other in turn, with but very few fashions that comfort, convenience and health could honestly sanction. If, at any time, one portion of the dress has been such as an honest and capable physician understanding the laws of life and health could recommend, another portion has been decidedly prejudicial to the welfare of the woman and doubly so to the offspring dependent upon her. Dress, in most of its phases, instead of being an aid to dignity and grace, and the promoter of comfort and health, has been a disease breeder, and sent to premature graves unnumbered self-sacrificed victims of irrational fashions and follies. At one time there have been enormous head-dresses, that would distort the neck; at another, high-heeled shoes to turn the feet and ankles to deformity; at another, dresses with immense hoops at the bottom, so magnificent in point of circumference as to debar all close approach; at another, lacing the waist to a wasp-like smallness; at another, an attempt to improve upon the beautiful handiwork of Nature by disfiguring rolls of cotton or bran; at another, an enormous load of skirts to weigh down and deform and disease the tender frame. Add to these, shoes of little better than gossamer materials, affording scarcely the slightest protection against the mud, snow and wet that prevail for a good part of the year in many sections of this country, and with these, dresses, in the intense cold of winter, which, in the satirical language of Voltaire, are “cut off too late at the top and too early at the bottom,” and we have a series of mischievous and unhealthy modes of dress, not only pernicious in their effects upon the race, but actually sinful in the eyes of Deity. The person should be protected and kept in uniform temperature by clothing of the right kind, and worn at such times or seasons, in such manner, and in such quantities as are best adapted to promote health, and not as now in obedience to the beck and whim of Fashion. Disease should not be allowed to invade the system by means of too much or too little clothing, but each person should wear just such clothing, at all times, as will involve the least risk, and produce the greatest vigor and personal enjoyment. But, so far from taking pains to obey the natural laws upon this subject, most persons labor directly to the contrary, and wear and endure just such garments as they know to be injurious to health. The exposure of the neck and chest, so common in the ranks of fashion, is as injurious to the health of the body as to the purity of the soul. Diseases of the throat, lungs and heart are the necessary consequence, and the thousands of our women are annually the victims of consumption from this cause alone. The practice of tight dressing obstructs the circulation in the muscles, and thus hinders their growth and development. The consequence of this is that the whole of the trunk is weak, requiring support, and liable to give way upon being exposed to the ordinary endurances of domestic life. As to the question of beauty, that is settled by the one great principle taught by Nature herself, that we cannot improve upon her.—Christian at Work.