The Arts of Beauty/Chapter 3

The foundation for a beautiful form must undoubtedly be laid in infancy. That is, nothing should be done at that tender age to obstruct the natural swell and growth of all the parts. "As the twig is bent, the tree's inclined," is quite as true of the body as of the mind. Common sense teaches us that the young fibres ought to be left, unincumbered by obstacles of art, to shoot harmoniously into the shape that nature drew. But this is a business for mothers to attend to.

It is important, however, that the girl should understand, as soon as she comes to the years of discretion, or as soon as she is old enough to realize the importance of beauty to a woman, that she has, to a certain extent, the management of her own form within her power. The first thing to be thought of is health, for there can be no development of beauty in sickly fibres. Plenty of exercise, in the open air, is the great recipe. Exercise, not philosophically and with religious gravity undertaken, but the wild romping activities of a spirited girl who runs up and down as though her veins were full of wine. Everything should be done to give joy and vivacity to the spirits at this age, for ​nothing so much aids in giving vigor and elasticity to the form as these. A crushed, or sad, or moping spirit, allowed at this tender age, when the shape is forming, is a fatal cause of a flabby and moping body. A bent and stooping form is quite sure to come of a bent and stooping spirit. If you would have the shape "sway gracefully on the firmly poised waist"—if you would see the chest rise and swell in noble and healthy expansion, send out the girl to constant and vigorous exercise in the open air.

And, what is good for the girl is good for the woman too. The same attention to the laws of health, and the same pursuit of out-door exercise will help a lady to develop a handsome form until she is twenty or twenty-five years old. "Many a rich lady would give all her fortune to possess the expanded chest and rounded arm of her kitchen girl. Well, she might have had both, by the same amount of exercise and spare living." And she can do much to acquire them even yet.

There have been many instances of sedentary men, of shrunk and sickly forms, with deficient muscle and scraggy arms, who by a change of business to a vigorous out-door exercise acquired fine robust forms, with arms as powerful and muscular as Hercules himself. I knew a young lady, who, at twenty-two years of age, in a great degree overcame the deformity of bad arms. In every other respect she was a most bewitching beauty. But her arms were distressingly thin and scraggy; and she determined at whatever pains, to remedy the evil. She began by a strict adherence to such a strong nutritious diet as was most favorable to ​the creation of muscle. She walked every day several hours in the open air, and never neglected the constant daily use of the dumb-bells. Thus she kept on, exercising and drilling herself, for two years, when a visible improvement showed itself, in the straightened and expanded chest; and in the fine hard swell of muscle upon the once deformed arms. She had fought, and she had conquered. Her perseverance was abundantly rewarded. Let the lady, who is ambitious for such charms, be assured that, if she has them not, they can be obtained on no lighter conditions.