The announcement that Fraulein Cilii Aussem, Germany's woman tennis champion, has been compelled to abandon the game as a result of eye strain ought to come as a useful reminder to women that they belong to the female sex, after all. Since the war women have been devoting themselves more and more strenuously to "sport". No form of physical exertion has been too much for them. They have been playing not only golf and tennis, but rugby football, and they have invaded even the boxing ring. Doctors have warned them in vain. The desire to achieve complete equality with men has overcome every other consideration.
Fraulein Aussem's misfortune is bad enough in itself, but its implications are even more alarming. Mr. H. S. Scrivener, the well-known tennis referee, declares that the game of tennis is bad for women, inasmuch as it tends to make pretty girls ugly. The constant strain of watching tennis balls, he asserts, results in the development of "a fixed and hard expression," and "there are cases of first-class players who, starting as really pretty girls, have become so strained in their expressions that they now are positively plain-looking." Mr. Scrivener is an expert whose statement ought to send every pretty tennis player back to her needle and her shears. The unsexed woman is one of the most pathetic phenomena of our times, and there is little doubt that athletic excellence rarely is accompanied by womanly attractions. We do not suggest a general return to mid-Victorianism, but we deplore the folly of excess.
There is much to be said for the motto of the late German Empress: Kinder, Kuche und Kirche - "Kids", Kitchen and Kirk. The old Empress's philosophy may be hopelessly old-fashioned, but it has produced some magnificent women.
The Irish Times, April 5th, 1929.