Healthful Dress
[
The Ministry of Healing, 288-294
(1905).]
In all respects the dress should be healthful. “Above all things,”
God desires us to “be in health”—health of body and of soul. And we
are to be workers together with Him for the health of both soul and
body. Both are promoted by healthful dress....
It was the adversary of all good who instigated the invention of the
ever-changing fashions. He desires nothing so much as to bring grief
and dishonor to God by working the misery and ruin of human beings.
One of the means by which he most effectually accomplishes this is
the devices of fashion, that weaken the body, as well as enfeeble the
mind and belittle the soul.
Women are subject to serious maladies, and their sufferings are
greatly increased by their manner of dress. Instead of preserving their
health for the trying emergencies that are sure to come, they by their
wrong habits too often sacrifice not only health but life, and leave
to their children a legacy of woe, in a ruined constitution, perverted
habits, and false ideas of life.
One of fashion’s wasteful and mischievous devices is the skirt
that sweeps the ground. Uncleanly, uncomfortable, inconvenient,
unhealthful—all this and more is true of the trailing skirt. It is extrava-
gant, both because of the superfluous material required, and because
of the needless wear on account of its length. And whoever has seen
a woman in a trailing skirt, with hands filled with parcels, attempt to
go up or down stairs, to enter a streetcar, to walk through a crowd,
to walk in the rain, or on a muddy road, needs no other proof of its
inconvenience and discomfort.
Another serious evil is the wearing of skirts so that their weight
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must be sustained by the hips. This heavy weight, pressing upon the
internal organs, drags them downward and causes weakness of the
stomach and a feeling of lassitude, inclining the wearer to stoop, which
further cramps the lungs, making correct breathing more difficult.
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