Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1926)

Wholesale Murder and Suicide [ CONTINUED FROM PACE 38 ] all of her classic origin, as well known as Gloria Swanson. Yet you hear her measurements quoted as almost anything except the correct ones. An antiquarian will tell you that the actual Venus de Milo is six feet, eight and one-half inches tall and she a standard for ideal feminine beauty! Now she wouldn't get along with that height before a movie camera! The thing that has made the Venus de Milo the most famous figure of all time, however, is that with all of her six feet eight and a half, she is in proportion. Her legs are in correct proportion to her torso, her torso to her shoulders, her arms, broken though they may be, to her neck, the lines of her face in comparison to the size of her head. No one has ever figured what Venus weighs; probably, because she is so correctly modeled, her weight isn't important. The average American woman — the average, understand, and not the ideal — is five feet five and one-half inches tall. Venus de Milo, scaled as though she were five feet six, has these measurements: Neck — Fifteen inches. Waist — Thirty-one and five-tenths inches. Hips — Forty-one and eight-tenths inches Size around upper arm — Thirteen and fivetenths inches. Width of breast — Eight and six-tenths inches. Size around shoulders — Forty-two and twotenths inches. So much for the goddess of beauty and love of the ancients. The ideal American type, as exemplified by the girl chosen Miss America last year, Fay Lamphier, is lighter in structure but equal in height, {'we feet six. Miss Lam phier varies from Venus to this extent — her neck is two inches smaller, her waist is four and a half inches less, her hips are nine inches narrower, thirty-two inches. Her face, however, is longer in outline than Venus' and her head, while less in circumference, is longer. She is four inches narrower around the shoulders and her breast is two and six-tenths inches smaller. She was called ideal at the Atlantic City pageant. She is nearest the measurements of Venus, the ideal of the ancients. And yet Fay Lamphier is too big to become a movie star. Jesse Lasky states that she has great dramatic talent. There is no doubting her beauty. But before the camera, with its tendency to heighten and broaden everything, she becomes positively husky, she appears too fat, though actually she hasn't an ounce of superfluous weight in proportion to her height and body structure. Therefore, don't hitch your scales to a movie star in your hope for an ideal figure. Almost every star has to diet herself nearly ill to retain a good movie figure. Yet the figure of the movie star and the figure of the clothes mannikin are actually the figures sought after by the mass of women attacked by reduceomania. The average movie star is five feet three in height. Many are less. Mary Pickford, Bessie Love, Viola Dana, Shirley Mason are all very little girls, less than five feet tall. They are all light in weight and Mary, in particular, is blessed with a pair of very thin, childish legs. The clothes mannikin of the smart fashion house, the type of establishment that here and in Paris sets the styles that every woman tries to wear, is rarely less than six feet tall, extremely thin, extremely tlat breasted and nar row hipped. Peggy Hopkins Joyce is this type and she wears clothes beautifully. But it is simply cuckoo for the average woman to strive after such a figure. There you have them, then, Venus, the bathing girl figure, the little girl and flapper figure, the clothes horse. They are all ideals before the American woman today. Actually, women's figures follow three general classifications. Dr. Charles R. Stockard divides us into linear types and lateral types, and persons who do not fall into either class must therefore be called medium types. The linear type is the fast-growing, high metabolizing, thin but not necessarily tall type. Metabolism is the process by which body waste is used up and body repairs made. The lateral type is slow in maturing, is stocky and round in form. The linear type is narrowbacked. The lateral type is broad-backed, and not only do these types vary in their outward physical characteristics, but also in the size and shape of the abdomen, the heart and the various organs. For instance, the torso of the normal person is of moderate length and of moderate breadth. The stomach is pear-shaped. But in the narrow-backed individual, the whole figure is lighter, the skeleton is lighter and more slender, the skin soft and delicate and the hair abundant. The individual is either tall and slender, or small and delicate. The stomach is long and tubular, instead of the more normal pear shape. The appendix is usually well developed, which may in part explain the common occurrence of appendicitis in thin, slender individuals. In contrast, the broad-backed type with its [ CONTINUED ON PAGE 124 1 There is no Royal Road to an Ideal Figure "V/'OU cannot achieve a healthy slenderness by freak diets, by drug* ging y°ur stomach or by sudden bursts of exercise. These are the dangerous methods pursued by the victims of Reduceomania. But you can have a welbproportioned figure and a strong body by following a sane diet, keeping regular hours and taking specially recommended exercises. In the September issue of Photoplay, you will find exercises prepared for you by experts and diets provided by Betty Comhson knows _i • ■ _ ti . r i i . , that exercise physicians — all to help you keep your proper weight in the open J^^^^, without sacrificing your health. Watch for the third article in this great series. Every woman should read Photoplats great articles on REDUCEOMANIA 105