YOUNG IDEAS

NZ Truth, Issue 1189, 13 September 1928, Page 3

YOUNG IDEAS

Giting Children A ' Dress Sense The opening of a beauty 'shop for children m .London has oaused an avalanche of letters to the press, . .''. sidried "Mother of Six," and

"Grandmother/ V ; -..s^---TTHESB letters protest at the idea of f; tfutting "notions" into a ohlld's head, which, they insist, is packed full of: folly "anyway. .'.■■,; . ','■{ ■.■,'■: '■ And at the first glance it would seem that 'all the beautifying , the average child needed was soap and water and a hair-brushing. This Judgment is too sweeping.- ' ; • . In an age when eight but of ten children bite their nails, a. little Ju-, ! dicial manicuring might engender enough ' personal vanity to make them atop the habit, and many people have a very strong feeling , that children's vanity, is too much restrloted. , - Hence : the beauty shop. . It also claims to 'produce m children' a "dress sense," and the system is worked out along higher lines than purely beautifying ones. It is quite a good idea—if hot ruined by people desiring toHurn their kiddies: into animated dolls. \ But, on the other hand, it is fair to expeot a child who is kept m gym. frocks at school to suddenly blossom forth into a young lady of fashion if she has been tacitly* ' forbidden to take an interest m her clothes or appearance, and all frivolous frocks have been denounced. ■ „■ Could any girl of fifteen go safely into a 6hop and buy herself an out- ; fit without erring on the of fussiness?, It is the result of the school years of suppression of ideas about clothes. She would have no notion; of correot j color or line, and the only way to give her any is to make it part of her education and treat the business of dreßßina f rom, m ftw?mai pspt pf jriew* _