Beautification Banned

One way to make a woman beautiful is to pierce a hole through the flesh of her lower lip and insert a flat wooden plug. Do the same with the upper lip, and gradually insert larger and larger plugs. At last two wooden discs as large as soup plates, each edged with stretched lip, will hang down from the beautified face, almost prevent speech, and render eating extremely difficult. Complete the beautification by filing the teeth to sharp points and hanging a ring in the nose. Then, in the French Colony of Senegal, West Africa, the woman so adorned may expect to command an excellent price from a wife-seeker.

Although the custom alluded to is of immemorial antiquity, an attempt was made last week to stamp it out utterly by His Excellency Jules Garde, Governor-General of French West Africa. To women who thus beautify themselves in future, a jail term of from two to five years. To "parents or beauty doctors" who perform or abet such beautification, jail sentences of from five to ten years. Thus proclaimed native heralds, by authority derived from President Gaston Doumergue of the French Republic.