LONG SKIRTS.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20234, 12 May 1931, Page 2

LONG SKIRTS.

RETURN NOT FAVOURED, WOMEN'S RESOLUTION. (rjtojt on* own correspondent ) LONDON, April 1. A resolution condemning long skirts was passed by a largo majority at a meeting in London of the National Union of Societies for EquaU.PitWcn-r ship. . 'flie resolution, which was moved by Mrs M. Stocks, of Manchester, deplored the return of long skirts as a reaction against the personal comforts and physical liberty of women, reminiscent of the years of their political disenfranchisement. It called upon • all Tt'omen who valued such liberty to, resist this reaction by refusing to follow the arbitrary decrees of fashion. Mis Stocks maintained that a person's actions and mentality were sffected by the clothes she wore and the coincidence < between the freeing ot women from dress and the freeing of women in politics was really no coincidence at all. "When our clothes get long again and our legs are tied up, our minds will ( suffer," she declared. "When I read of women, whose skirts are like creamy foam round their ankles, I always think they must have creamy foam in their heads, too;" "Taking the Lead." Mrs Stocks recalled tho "dreadful stays" which her mother bought for lier when she went to school, but she refused to wear them. " 'Where,'*" she continued, " 'do' you think your figure will be when you are 40?' asked mv mother. "Well, I am 40, and I do not know where it is. 1 only know it is not where my mother thought it would be." "To-day," said Mrs Stocks, "when I go about I have a superiority complex when I. compare my clothes with men '9 clothes. In hot weather I can take off nearly all my clothes, while men cannot even remove their coats without being turned out of restaurants. "We should do our best to keep that superiority complex. What annoys me is to see adult politically enfranchised women wearing clothes they do not like just because other women are wearing them. I for one am not going to wear long skirts, if everybody else in the world does. "The kind of porson who should take the lead on this question is the Duchess of York or Lady Diana. Cooper. There is at least one lady in this country who chooses her own fashions, and sticks to them, and that is the Queen." (Cheers.) Miss Eleanor Rathbonc, M.P., said: "What we dislike is the humbug of having to treat as important things what men have said are important in setting our fashions. A woman's life is very largely conditioned by her clothing, and this question is worthy of being regarded quite as seriously as any other 011 our agenda." The O.T.C. System. The O.T.C.' system in public schools was also discussed. Mrs. Barnard, of Bethnal Green, said that she had two sons, one who had been in' the 0.T.0. and one in the Boy Scouts. She had found that there was no comparison between the excellent training given in the Boy Scouts and that given in the O.T»G,.' A resolution was passedurging £hat all forms of on join the 0.T.C.. or'special privileges tfe those who joined, discdiiifnuH.