LONG SKIRTS UNHEALTHY?

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1062, 28 August 1930, Page 18

LONG SKIRTS UNHEALTHY?

AUCKLAND M.D. CONDEMNS UNHYGIENIC ATTIRE MODERN GIRL ADMIRED The unhealthiness of the long dress, which threatens to supersede the present short garment, was strongly condemned by Dr. C. Maguire when speaking on “Women Through the Ages,” at a meeting of the Overseas League last evening. This type of dress, he maintained, was characteristic of times that were hygienically • ignorant.

“I feel an. intense admiration for the modern gix'l,” said Dr. Maguire, “and I think that her freedom in dress ,is collateral with her general emancipation. Untrammelled limbs, exposed to the light and air, are surely far more healthy than those that are covered. Long dresses for the evening by all means, but for ordinary wear, most emphatically no!” Dr. Maguire declared that It was natural for man, in his native state, to go naked. He, of course, did not wish to advocate such drastic measures, but he would like to see women adhere to the present mode of attire. Twenty years ago tiieir everyday attire weighed 201 b, today lib—which was the more healthy? From a medical point of view the answer was obvious. Nature would provide her own protection by making women immune to the petty illnesses liable through under exposure. A brief adumbration of the life of women throughout the ages was given by the speaker. He described her dominance in Egypt, to the extent cf proposing to man, her glory in Greece, where she became the theme of Praxitiles, and her dignity as the Roman matron. And finally women of the present day. Two cinematograph pictures were shown. The first was a trip down the Wanganui River, and the second an adaptation from Edgar Allan Poe's story, “The Fall of the House of Usher.” The producers endeavoured to translate the tormenting thoughts of Roderick Usher by symbolic pictures. The method of handling the picture was of a new school and the effect was one of extreme weirdness.