CROSSED LEGS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 316, 29 March 1928, Page 16

CROSSED LEGS

BAD FOR GIRLS BOSTON FORBIDS IT Where the cold spirit of prohibition and the admonitions of moralists have failed, science may effect a revolution in the habits and mannerisms of the so-called modern flapper. The statement was recently made that the dance known as the Charleston, if carried to excess, would produce a race of knock-kneed women. The socalled “debutante slouch” was nipped in the bud, so to speak, when It was observed that those who practised it most assiduously were developing round shouders. Now comes a stern dictate from Boston wherein, girls are commanded to stop crossing their legs. This is a habit which started about the time skirts began to Bhorten. Before that it would have been a most difficult matter for girls to cross their legs. As soon as skirts became knee length, and female lower limbs lost some of the mystery which had attached itself to them by virtue of several generations of long skirts, the leg-cro3Sing habit started. The pioneers were probably the arriving passengers on ocean steamships, who were invariably photographed in that position. In a recen t convention of osteopaths in Boston it was declared that the crossing of legs, if developed into a habit, leads to curvature of the spine, Miss Hazel Richards, a senior of the College of Osteopathy, recently sat to a medical photographer, demonstrating what happens when she crosses her legs. One shouder was thrown out of position by the practice. If the practice is continued until it becomes a habit, curvature of the spine must result, the osteopathic experts insist.