Part 29 (1/2)
CORPULENCE VERSUS BEAUTY
An instructive instance of the loose reasoning which prevails in the esthetic sphere is provided by the Rev. H.N. Hutchinson, in his _Marriage Customs in Many Lands_. After describing some of the customs of the Australians, he goes on to say:
”One would think that such degraded creatures as these men are would be quite incapable of appreciating female beauty, but that is not the case. Good-looking girls are much admired and consequently frequently stolen away.”
As a matter of fact, beauty has nothing to do with the stealing of the women. The real motive is revealed in the following pa.s.sage from Brough Smyth (79):
”_A very fat woman_ presents such an attractive appearance to the eyes of the blacks that she is always liable to be stolen. _However old and ugly she way be_, she will be courted and petted and sought for by the warriors, who seldom hesitate to risk their lives if there is a chance for obtaining so great a prize.”
An Australian Shakspere obviously would have written ”Fat provoketh thieves sooner than gold,” instead of ”beauty provoketh thieves.” And the amended maxim applies to savages in general, as well as to barbarians and Orientals. In his _Savage Life in Polynesia_, the Rev.
W.W. Gill remarks:
”The great requisites for a Polynesian beauty are to be fat and as fair as their dusky skins will permit. To insure this, favorite children, whether boys or girls, were regularly fattened and imprisoned till nightfall when a little gentle exercise was permitted. If refractory, the guardian would whip the culprit for not eating more.”[115]
American Indians do not differ in this respect from Australians and Polynesians. The horrible obesity of the squaws on the Pacific Coast used to inspire me with disgust, as a boy, and I could not understand how anyone could marry such fat abominations. Concerning the South American tribes, Humboldt says (_Trav.,_ I., 301): ”In several languages of these countries, to express the beauty of a woman, they say that she is fat, and has a narrow forehead.”
FATTENING GIRLS FOR THE MARRIAGE MARKET
The population of Africa comprises hundreds of different peoples and tribes, the vast majority of whom make bulk and weight the chief criterion of a woman's charms. The hideous deformity known as steatopyga, or hypertrophy of the b.u.t.tocks, occurs among South African Bushman, Koranna, and Hottentot women. Darwin says that Sir Andrew Smith
”once saw a woman who was considered a beauty, and she was so immensely developed behind that when seated on level ground she could not rise, and had to push herself along until she came to a slope. Some of the women in various negro tribes have the same peculiarity; and according to Burton, the Somal men, 'are said to choose their wives by ranging them in a line and by picking her out who projects farthest _a tergo_. Nothing can be more hateful to a negro than the opposite form.'”[116]
The notions of the Yoruba negroes regarding female perfection consist, according to Lander, in ”the bulk, plumpness, and rotundity of the object.”
Among the Karague, women were exempted from hard labor because the men were anxious to have them as fat as possible. To please the men, they ate enormous quant.i.ties of bananas and drank milk by the gallon. Three of Rumanika's wives were so fat that they could not go through an ordinary door, and when they walked they needed two men each to support them.
Speke measured one of the much-admired African wonders of obesity, who was unable to stand except on all fours. Result: around the arms, 1 foot 11 inches; chest, 4 feet 4 inches; thigh, 2 feet 7 inches; calf, 1 foot 8 inches; height, 5 feet 8 inches.
”Meanwhile, the daughter, a la.s.s of sixteen, sat stark-naked before us, sucking at a milk-pot, on which her father kept her at work by holding a rod in his hand; for as fattening is the first duty of fas.h.i.+onable female life, it must be duly enforced by the rod if necessary. I got up a bit of flirtation with missy, and induced her to rise and shake hands with me. Her features were lovely, but her body was round as a ball.”
Speke also tells (370) of a girl who, a mere child when the king died, was such a favorite of his, that he left her twenty cows, in order that she might fatten upon milk after her native fas.h.i.+on.
ORIENTAL IDEALS
Mungo Park declared that the Moorish women
”seem to be brought up for no other purpose than that of ministering to the sensual pleasures of their imperious masters. Voluptuousness is therefore considered as their chief accomplishment.... The Moors have singular ideas of feminine perfection. The gracefulness of figure and motion, and a countenance enlivened by expression, are by no means essential points in their standard: With them _corpulence and beauty seem to be terms nearly synonymous_: A woman of even moderate pretensions must be one who cannot walk without a slave under each arm, to support her; and a perfect beauty is a load for a camel.... Many of the young girls are compelled, by their mothers, to devour a great quant.i.ty of kouskous, and drink a large bowl of camel's milk every morning.... I have seen a poor girl sit crying, with the bowl at her lips, for more than an hour; and her mother, with a stick in her hand watching her all the while, and using the stick without mercy, whenever she observed that her daughter was not swallowing.”
A Somali love-song says: ”You are beautiful and your limbs are fat; but if you would drink camel's milk you would be still more beautiful.” Nubian girls are especially fattened for their marriage by rubbing grease over them and stuffing them with polenta and goat milk.
When the process is completed they are poetically likened to a hippopotamus. In Egypt and India, where the climate naturally tends to make women thin, the fat ones are, as in Australia, the ideals of beauty, as their poets would make plain to us if it were not known otherwise. A Sanscrit poet declares proudly that his beloved is so borne down by the weight of her thighs and b.r.e.a.s.t.s that she cannot walk fast; and in the songs of Hala there are numerous ”sentiments”
like that. The Arabian poet Amru declares rapturously that his favorite beauty has thighs so delightfully exuberant that she can scarcely enter the tent door. Another Arabian poet apostrophizes ”the maid of Okaib, who has haunches like sand-hills, whence her body rises like a palm-tree.” And regarding the references to personal appearance in the writings of the ancient Hebrews, Rossbach remarks:
”In all these descriptions human beauty is recognized in the luxurious fulness of parts, not in their harmony and proportion. Spiritual expression in the sensual form is not adverted to” (238).
Thus, from the Australian and the Indian to the Hebrew, the Arab, and the Hindoo, what pleases the men in women is not their beauty, but their voluptuous rotundity; they care only for those sensual aspects which emphasize the difference between the s.e.xes. The object of the modern wasp waist (in the minds of the cla.s.s of females who, strange to say, are allowed by respectable women to set the fas.h.i.+on for them) is to grossly exaggerate the bust and the hips, and it is for the same reason that barbarian and Oriental girls are fattened for the marriage market. The appeal is to the appet.i.te, not to the esthetic sense.
THE CONCUPISCENCE THEORY OF BEAUTY