CHALLENGE TO AGE

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 138, 7 December 1929, Page 15

CHALLENGE TO AGE

THE WOMAN OF TO-DAY

Anyone who can remember tlic days of the "bustle", and the leg-of-mut-ton sleeve, and those formidable skirts all glossy and solid and flounced, must marvel at the mentality of the Victorians, who could bo marvellously and monstrously artificial in everything that pertained to dress, and yet were- forbidden to interfere with their complexions, writes a well-known novelist in a London magazine. _ Was man responsible? But why? Was it he who ordained that his wives and J . 3 ? hters snould be laced up and padded wto social ana unaesthetic stuffiness? Was it he who forbade them to touch their faces? Babylon, the Scarlet Woman, Piccadilly! Let Victorian morality wear its bustles and its whaleboned virtue, but let complexions go hang! r 6

My impresion is that women are far better-looking than they were 20 or 30 years ago, but when I put this opinion before my wife she corrects me She says: "It is not the flesh that has changed, but the spirit." Woman spends less time hi a pew ana more time in front of her toilet table. I suppose my wife is right. Woman, haying escaped from a starched Victorianism, and becoming more free to breathe and move as her skirts shortened and her ribs ceased to be pinched, grew healthier. It was a liberation of the spirit producing a liberation of the flesh. Other freedoms supervened. Heaven and Hell are very near to each other, but not more distant than repression and self-restraint.

To those who assert that modern woman is an artificial creature, one answers: "Was Victorian woman a model of naturalness?'? ? And -what of Georgian woman, with her head made up to last^for ;\veeks, and turning rancid and verminous? Also, to live in a stateof nature one shtraid" revert to the Hottentot.

: Modern woiiian'-is^a.;rinoie>; .cleanly oreaturei a ,moro:i, ; whoi.eso'me;':creature, a_ more, progressive^e'reatureV^jSEe-- has simplified dress and simplicity beautiful. She hasv-recovered control of her arms and le^s£;Ber lungs and her digestive app'araiu^/have been emancipated. Viriij-f:

She is better to lpoK af,. because she is healthier in body,: face/: aud dress. She is hygienic. She.idoes not carry about,with her a suggestion of warm flannel and dust and loose hairpins and loose hairs. She is burnished and bright. Compare tho: v/orkitig rgir] of to-day with the wbTking girl pf,a generation ago, and the contrast "is. stattling and splendid. Where are the.slovenly drabs one used to* see? Give'praise, to'artificial silk.- ■■■■.-- - ■:.-.. J V C- J

"The pot dog nuisance in England is my chief aversion," states a London writer. "They are everywhere as- well as evidence of them, in the trains, on the buses, and on footpaths, mostly led by ladies of uncertain ago who might well be giving the time wasted on dogs to some more worthy object. Cigarettes, cinemas, and canines could well be restricted here to the ultimate benefit of the community. " ■ .