WHY WESTERN WOMEN SHINGLE.

Hokitika Guardian, 8 December 1925, Page 3

WHY WESTERN WOMEN SHINGLE.

There are two reasons lor the unprecedented cutting of locks by the great ladies ol Western Europe first, it. desire lo make mamlest their new-found political p.wet". secondly, the natural indolence which is the heritage of all mortals, ,avs (lonnoske Kontai, the eeleu'iited Japanese Poet, in the London •‘Daily Mail.” When a shingled woman realises chat she need hut put simp on a towel , m | rub vigorously tbe hennutul | etiestal ot her bead, she spends only a tew ninnies ol time, ami thereafter can mswer the teieplK.ne. harangue Die cook, or sell tickets for the next charily jail at the Albert Hall. , As a Japanese. I find a great difhculiv in knowing female I rum male v. lieu f venture into the haunts of Loudon, that most intricate civilisation. Het ilch red. I h-ok at the neat, shorn beads of the intelligent women ami cornier wl,ether they wish to proeL'.im to all that their political treedom is :l fact. , T„ me. a Japanese, who has been brought up to think that action belongs to the waterfall, that colour is the exclusive privilege of the azalea plant, and that tenderness is shared only >. breezes and the weeping willows, the western women do so stimulate my brain and upset me by their restless-

ness. . It is all so new and mysterious. Sltinalcd hair is not. to my mind, a an'teni of a sex revolution. will be mothers in spite ot a million •cars and a thousand eaitfeurs, and men will Us husbands although civilisation ■ndergoes centuries of chaos Also there is a saving grave provided ■>> the divinities, which shape our entls •'lthoueh we be Japanese or Englishof Biarritz nr the Lido—and that > the. children on whom we are uehniUly saddling our unsolved problems on unwaged wars, our hatreds yet to ' "ir'is not the dressing of the hair and I tody that matters—these whims pass into the museums or into a pie lure. The full wigs of the l<th ctiin-. the taut hair of S.r 1 horn s Lawrence's heyday, the ••ambnw.nl whiskers of Thackeray, are merely externals. Although we nil are trying to „ v ourselves and draw ndm.rat.on to ourselves, we still do our bit of work in order to pay the pipcf. fib'* sweat blood in doing it.

"Whothor he hair !>o shingled <.r down to tho waist. tlit* woman of East or West i< torn l*v the twin wishes of excitement for herself and pence in this world for others. Even Governments recognise the dual significance and the prophetic depth of woman's shingled lifttr,