Note 42 — Chapter V · Virgin Love in the Positive Man and the Positive Girl

Speaking of the prevalence of this type of girl at present, Arabella Kenealy says (op. cit., p. 84): “So devitalized and neurasthenic are many of our pretty young girls that their flowerlike faces, topping over-tall and undeveloped bodies, suggest delicate blossoms crowning long attenuated, sapless stems. Neither faces nor bodies are vitalized and athrill with powers rooted in healthful organs, vivified by healthful functions, and instinct with warm, iron-rich, magnetic blood. They show that making for beauty which is inherent in the Woman-traits, but which, in latter-day girls, owing to defective constitutional vigour or to educational, social or industrial exhaustion, has been able to realize itself only in sickly and weed-like development.”