Arena magazine - Volume 04 . entortured. On her head at fashionscaprice the hair of the dead hasbeen piled. Hats and bonnets,wraps and gowns laden with heavybeads and jet have as seriously im-paired her health as they haverendered her miserable; the tightlacing required by the wasp waistshas produced generations of invalidsand be- Street costume. Spring, 1884. queathed toposterity suf-fering thatwill not vanishfor many decades. By it, as hasbeen pointed out by the authoritiescited, every vital organ in the bodyhas been seriously affected. Theheart and lungs, by nature protect-ed by a cage of b
Arena magazine - Volume 04 . entortured. On her head at fashionscaprice the hair of the dead hasbeen piled. Hats and bonnets,wraps and gowns laden with heavybeads and jet have as seriously im-paired her health as they haverendered her miserable; the tightlacing required by the wasp waistshas produced generations of invalidsand be- Street costume. Spring, 1884. queathed toposterity suf-fering thatwill not vanishfor many decades. By it, as hasbeen pointed out by the authoritiescited, every vital organ in the bodyhas been seriously affected. Theheart and lungs, by nature protect-ed by a cage of bone, have beenabnormally crushed in a space socontracted as to absolutely prohibitthe free action upon which healthdepended; while the downwardpressure was necessarily equallyinjurious to her delicate tightly drawn corset hasproved an unmitigated curse tothe living and a legacy of miseryand disease to posterity. Andthis cruel deforming of the mostbeautiful of Gods creations wassaid to be beautiful simply because. i§§S4F Street costume.(Compare Summer, with anterior view of thorax of corset-wearinglady of to-day.) See page 412. Digitized by VjOOQIC 416 THE ARENA. fashion willed it. Nor was this all; enormous bustles andskirts of prodigious dimension have borne their weight largelyupon that part of her body which above all else should be abso-lutely free from pressure. By this means the most sensitiveorgans have been ruthlessly subjected to down pressingweights which for exquisite torture and for the abso-lute certainty of the long train of agony that mustresult, rival the heartless ingenuity of the Inquisition ofthe Middle Ages. Beyond this generation of debilitatedand invalided mothers, rises a countless posterity robbedof its birthright of health while yet unborn.* A possiblegenius deformed and dwarfed by the weight of a fashionabledress; a brain which might have been brilliant renderedidiotic by the constant pressure of a corset, and the weari-some w
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