Beauty: Illustrated Chiefly by an Analysis and Classification of Beauty in WomanWalker, Alexander
Philosophy
Beauty: Illustrated Chiefly by an Analysis and Classification of Beauty in Woman
Walker, Alexander
Beauty, Personal; Women
In farther illustration of the manliness of this habit we may observe,
that throughout Europe, wars have generally led to its temporary and
partial introduction, as at the present day. Those assuredly blunder, who
ridicule the wearing of the beard. Silly affectation, on the contrary, is
imputable only to those who, by removing the beard, take the trouble so
far to emasculate themselves! and who think themselves beautified by an
unnatural imitation of the smoother face of woman!
As appendages of the skin, the nails may here be noticed. Their beauty
consists in their figure, their surface, and their color.
By their figure, they serve as a defence to the delicate extremities of
the fingers, which would otherwise be easily hurt against hard bodies.
They form at once shields and supporting arches to the fingers; and they
give facility in laying hold of bodies which would escape from their
smallness. They ought accordingly to be arched, and to extend as far as
the flesh which terminates the fingers.--The form of the nails depends
much on the care employed in cutting them during infancy, and still more
on the mode of employing the hand.
The nails ought also to be smooth and polished, somewhat transparent, and
rose-colored. Their rosy color seems to show that their texture has less
density and more transparence.
It is in this view of the nutritive system and the characteristics which
render it beautiful, and especially after this portion of it which regards
the organs and functions of secretion, that the mammæ and their beauty
should be considered.
In woman, the bust is smaller and more rounded than in man; and it is
distinguished by the volume and the elegant form of the bosom.
The external and elevated position of the mammæ is by far the most
suitable for a nursling, which, no longer deriving subsistence from within
the mother, nor yet able of itself to find it without, must be gently and
softly borne toward her; an admirable position, says a French writer,
"which, in keeping the infant under the eyes and in the arms of the
mother, establishes between them an interesting exchange of tenderness, of
cares, and of innocent caresses, which enables the one the better to
express its wants, and the other to enjoy the sacrifices which she makes,
in continually contemplating their object."
According to Buffon, in order that the mammæ be well placed, it is
necessary that the space between them should be as great as that from the
mammæ to the middle of the depression between the clavicles, so that these
three points form an equilateral triangle.
The two portions of the mammæ should be well detached. The whole presents,
in beautiful models, more elegance than volume; and the areola, it may be
observed, is red in fair women and deeper colored in brown ones.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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