These professional entertainers are practically lost to posterity. While they are actively before the public they do not reproduce, and if they leave the stage or the cabaret for marriage, it is usually marriage of the nonfertile kind. Apparently, thousands of these selected females enter the profession every year; the very ones who, on Plato’s plan would be picked out above all others for the perpetuation of the race being thus eliminated almost completely.[1]
The proportion of the female population which possesses distinctive beauty is never large in any community. If one will stand on a street which, like Fifth Avenue in New York, or Charles Street, in Baltimore, is a route of feminine parade, and count the number of women whom he or she would class as “really beautiful” the truth of this generalization will be borne in on him. He will realize, in particular, that a majority vote of women would never favor a style of dress which should reveal the form any more than at present, and
- ↑ Some of the readers of my manuscript have expressed astonishment at my description of chorus girls and dancers as the type of high development. This astonishment is due to failure to understand my real point. Individually, many of these women may be of undeveloped mentality and coarse fiber: these are largely accidents of education and environment. Nevertheless, these same women may be racially of very high grade, that is, they may represent stock capable of high moral and mental education, as well as of excellent physique. The racial qualities, transmissible to progeny, it must be remembered, are independent of training. It must also be borne in mind, that I am speaking of the type of entertainer which is really well selected, that is, which has the high as well as the lower qualitifications. Many chorus girls, as I specifically point out, are not thoroughly beautiful, but are selected on an anatomical basis alone. These, of course, would not be picked “above all others.”
