p. 10 | THE WEIGHTS WE CARRY by Kate Upson Clark

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 6, 1901

THE WEIGHTS WE CARRY.

By Kate Upson Clark

It is well understood that in order to win a race the runner must carry as little weight as possible. It has been decided that even somewhat superior strength will not give a heavy boat-crew victory over a lighter one of less muscle. “Get rid of weight!” is the motto for everybody, or should be, who wishes to win in any of the many departments of life endeavor. It should be especially the motto of women in this day. They are entering into all kinds of activities, and they need every atom of strength that they can “beg, borrow, or steal.”

These reflections were suggested by the remarks of a lady who had been assisting a very learned and charming friend to carry a dress-suit case. The suit case was of the fashionable leather sort, and was heavy even when empty. When it was closely packed, it appeared to the unfortunate being who carried it to weigh not less than a ton. Yet this charming lady, and thousands like her, prefer to stagger along under this unnecessary weight rather than to carry a rattan or matting or papier-maché suit case or extension bag.

Woven suit cases and paper-maché are not fashionable. Expensive and heavy leather is. And where fashion enters, the flesh ceases to be more than meat or the body than raiment.

Sometimes it seems as if most women enjoy being sick. If they do not, why do they take such efficacious measures to be sick, as often apparently as they can? There is no need of it. A merciful Providence did not make woman a natural invalid. If she would only dress properly, eat and sleep properly, and stop carrying around pounds more than her frame was made to carry, she would usually have very good health.

One of the leading educators of the country said recently that she was afraid to tell people how little sickness there was in the woman’s college with which she was connected.

“Why is that?”

“Because only a fraction of one per cent. of all the students have had to lose any college exercise this year from sickness,” was her unexpected reply.

“Are you sure?”

“We have worked it out in the most accurate way. There is no man’s college in the land which can begin to show such a record.”

“How do you account for it?” her questioner hastened to ask.

“Simply good food, regular hours, proper dress, and proper exercise,” she returned.

Thus it does begin to look as if health might sometime be fashionable again. It has been vaguely asserted that health is already fashionable, and it probably is in some isolated circles; but it is certainly not throughout the great mass of well-to-do women, in spite of the increase in golf playing, tennis, boating, and physical culture among women. Look around you in a single walk down any fashionable

avenue in any large city on a pleasant day. You will see nearly every woman whom you meet with a more wasp-like waist than ever before, and with clothes more hampering, more voluminous, heavier. Among your own acquaintances count up the cases of nervous exhaustion and various kinds of “itis.” Woman can not be strong and healthy when the paltry ten dollars’ worth of strength which she has to spend every day (and she may be sure that it is a fixed amount, and better represented by ten cents than dollars) has to be frittered away in resisting the pressure of several pounds to the square inch of her corset around her body, and in carrying skirts which weigh from two to ten pounds more than they ought to. The handicap is too great for any woman to bear without paying the penalty.

When we add to these weights carried by almost all women, that of the fashionable leather suit case, which goes on journeys with her, the beaded wraps, the tight shoes (for tightness is weight, since strength is exhausted in resisting the pressure), and the monstrous hats, few of which are light in weight, however “fluffy” they may appear, we wonder that any woman can bear up under her accumulated burdens. We must get rid of these weights or we can never run the race that is set before us. Instead we shall be, as we are, wearied ere the race is really begun, and shall totter and stumble; we shall be mere nonentities—a sort of graven images—and ailing and suffering ones at that.—Kate Upson Clark.