Decadent Demos

In the great current spectacle of U. S. Democracy, the rights of life, liberty and happiness may or may not be seen as secured to the greatest number. But there is one privilege, always reserved for the tyrannous overlords of previous civilizations, which modern Democracy unquestionably confers upon the masses. It is the privilege of Decadence. Last week the Hearstian tabloid sheetlet, the New York Daily Mirror, outdid even its pandering tabloid rivals, the Daily News and Bernarr ("Body Love") Macfadden's Graphic, in the nice art of tickling the palate of Demos. A week before, a hosiery company had conducted an ankle contest among chorus girls, and the Mirror hit upon the idea of a competition between other parts of girls' bodies. The Mirror delicately chose the lips; offered a $100 prize, and an understudy's job in a kissy revue, for "the prettiest lips in America." For convenience and popularity, it was explained that entrants might display their labial pulchritude by smearing their lips with rouge and pressing them upon slips of paper in whatever patterns seemed most seductive. When these slips began pouring in by the thousand, the Mirror treated its "soul-starved" readers to reproductions of the smears. In smelly lunchrooms, dirty washrooms, ugly workrooms, hot bedrooms, thousands of young females forgot their troubles in the decadent thrill of examining, preening and comparing lips. When the winner was announced --a Manhattan nymph, of course, "a dainty little married woman... Christine League"--the Mirror published a close-up photograph of her provocative cupid-bow orifice upraised in "the pose in which Christine's hubby says he likes her best." Another offering the Mirror made last week was a discussion of what constitutes true beauty in the female form. The idea the editors tried to get across was that "flat flappers" are not desirable, that dieting is therefore foolish. Voluptuous, well-fleshed women are preferable, the article tried to say. More or less appropriately, poses by Marjorie Rambeau, Lenore Ulric, Gertrude Ederle, Ethel Barrymore, Helen Wills were printed to illustrate the point. The interesting thing was a detail which used to be unusual for a Hearst paper. However vulgar his aims and practices, Publisher Hearst never used to be accused, even by his most nauseated critics, of hiring writers ignorant of the English language. Yet in this article some Hearstling had committed a ludicrous blunder. The headline read and the text reiterated: "THE REAL BEAUTIES HAVE FULSOME FIGURES."

As every one knows "fulsome" means "offensive from excess of praise; hence coarse, indelicate."

Publisher Hearst's descent from the newspaper to the tabloid, from pardonable news-sensation to illiteracy, occurred in 1924 when he established the Mirror to compete with the Patterson-McCormick Daily News.