A beautiful woman has no need – nor time – to be anything else.

Illustration by A. H. Fish, photo by Baron de Meyer.

A beautiful woman has no need — nor time — to be anything else. Among her virtues she must include courage, patience and perseverance, but the ends justify the means. Success in her chosen career allows her to achieve everything a woman could want — a jealous husband, envious friends, and the admiration of her grandchildren. Besides, it gives pleasure to appreciators and jobs to many nice and worthy people.
- “Vogue Body and Beauty Book” by Bronwen Meredith, 1977.

“Beautiful women of her type lose, in this matter of admiration alone, their tremendous sense of class distinction: they are obscurely aware that it is their mission to flash the jewel of their beauty before all men, so that they desire it and work to get the wealth to buy it. And thus be seduced by a present appetite to a tilling of the earth that serves the future.”
- “The Return of the Solider” by Rebecca West, 1918