06 Oct 1923 – The Great Debate
Letter from Kate Strong – Geary, Oklahoma
The Great Debate
Dear Old Reporter – I am sending you my paper which won in our debate before the Priscilla Club. I was on the negative side and the affirmative only received one vote. The subject was "Resolved; it is better to be smart than good looking." Pretty good for an old lady in her 80th year. Just think we will have been married 60 years soon. I want you to understand that it was "Nonsense Day" at the Priscilla Club, that is why I wrote so silly a piece. We enjoyed a most delightful visit in August from our grand children, Earl and Elizabeth Rumley. The sun had turned on all burners full force during July and August. We had seventy-five days without any rain in Blaine County. Mr. Strong has fully recovered and is able to work again. …Mrs. Kate Strong.
Honorable judges and ladies of the Priscilla Club:
It is beyond my understanding and comprehension why the program committee chose the homeliest old woman in the Priscilla Club to represent beauty in a debate. Of course, I have the one good looking woman in the club on my side and that makes me feel better prepared for the issue pending, beauty vs. smartness. Of course I think my opponents may have more brains and are somewhat smarter in debating the question, but if looks designate brains they have a full quota. My lack of brain matter at the present time is due to so much perspiration escaping from my body into my brain the past hot summer that they would make a teaspoonful of white gravy even if they were already half cooked. I believe if every member of this club was offered a choice between beauty and smartness they would invariably choose beauty. Beauty may be only skin deep and ugly goes clear to the bone. Beauty may fade but ugly holds her own.
In the beginning of creation Eve in the Garden of Eden enthralled and seduced Adam with her sublime and marvelous beauty, and the vamp Delilah beguiled the strong Samson. Not a woman in the Bible is noted for her smartness only. The desire of her beautiful body. Not an ugly woman is to be found in all King Solomon’s harem of beauties, nor some of his numerous concubines. We all know they were not smart or they would not have submitted to so many rivals. They must have had double rows of twin beds to keep in order for their beauty sleep, and so he could turn over from one to the other at his leisure or inclination, and give a good night kiss.
Men may get tired of looking at a beautiful woman but as yet I have never seen one. I think everyone present have their dressing table covered with cosmetics, pomades, lip sticks, rouge, etc, in fact anything and everything to enhance their beauty. I take notice some of you smart women powder your noses at Priscilla club. Oh, the vanity of the smart homely women. It is deplorable to try to be beautiful when you are not and never will be. I have heard of mothers sitting for hours before a beautiful portrait hoping her unborn daughter might be beautiful. Beauty always appeals to the eye of man, woman or child, wherever found, in dance halls, slums, movies, weddings or church festivals. In Japan there isn’t an old maid to be found in the whole eight islands of the empire. The beauty of the little brown women appeal to the little brown men. Isn’t it nice to be a mother and not a wife is often the case in Japan. The recent earthquake may change conditions.
Edith Johnson, of the Daily Oklahoman has discovered an actress, an ugly one and very smart. I am glad she finds consolation when she looks in her mirror. You scarcely ever see a portly, fleshy woman but what is good looking. Look at Woodrow Wilson. He cast his eye on the beautiful portly Mrs. Galt and was lost. Jake Hammon, the oil millionaire, forsook a smart wife for the girlish, seductive beauty of Clara Smith, of Ardmore. Cleopatra, the Egyptian queen’s wondrous enticing beauty has been handed down for ages. Who ever heard of a duel being fought over a smart woman, it is always a beautiful one. You cannot find a man whose first love was not a beautiful young girl. He may have married the smart woman, but the sweet remembrance still remains. How often do we hear it said, "that woman is smart but as ugly as sin." There could not be a worse comparison. Hadn’t you rather be the beautiful Mrs. Lancaster that governor Jack Walton chose to be queen of the Fort Worth, Texas cotton carnival. Edith Johnson, she is smart, but, O, Lord, how would she look sitting on the throne with that homely profile of hers. Deliver me from smart homely women. No difference how smart a woman or girl is there in no need for her to apply for a position at Hollywood unless she is as beautiful as an angel. It is said angels in heaven are beautiful, but I will wait until I get there to find out how smart they are. If you are endowed with beauty you do not have to be smart, beauty is wholly sufficient.
I can remember back when a growing girl of twelve or thirteen of crying over my homeliness. I drank tansy tea, washed my face in chamomile dew to better my complexion, but it didn’t work. I tell you beauty is sublime and it is your fortune if you have it. I once had a beau. "Oh, Kate," he says, "I came to sit and talk with you." I did my very best to entertain him, but he got up and asked a pretty girl to dance with him. They called him Spud, but he wasn’t my sweet potato any more.
My present husband courted a pretty girl, why he didn’t marry her I never knew. A year after we were married she came to visit us a few hours. Every time she spoke his name there was a caress in her voice. I felt so sorry for her I wished she had gotten him. I think I could have gotten some other fellow, and by the time I had nine kids by him I wished forty times over she had gotten him.
All your argument against beauty will not convince me but what beauty is eternal. Look how long the glorious ecstatic beauty of the lovely Mary Anderson lay enshrined in the heart of the man who committed suicide thirty years later, or the immortal Lincoln, the heaven born beauty of Ann Rutledge lay deep in the grave yard of his lonely heart for all time. Years after he felt the beauty of these lines "There is a flower in every garden sweet as new mown hay. There is a note in my heartstrings that turn to the beauty of thee to me. There is a thought in every temple in the mind wrapped round with clay that will blend in transfigured beauty of thee to me, sweet Ann Rutledge."
So beauty forever and forever unto eternity.
KATE STRONG
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