SHOULD BREECHES BE WORN BY WOMEN.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XI, Issue 3325, 1 November 1919, Page 2

SHOULD BREECHES BE WORN BY WOMEN.

AN INCH FOR AN ELI.

An eminent medical ~man (says a writer in the Daily Telegraph) was complaining the other day, more in sorrow -than in .anger, that for years he had been urging women, for reasons of hygiene, to "take an inch 01$ their skirts, and new they have taken an ell. For sanitary reasons the change could be -approved, but he was ‘not Sure about the - matter of modesty. It modesty means hiding your legs, there is plainly not much left.‘ in England. But. this interpretation seems arbitrary. In Oriental countries it nleuans hiding your face, and various other denominations cf the heathan have other interpretations. Modesty will sti.ll survive if we all were breeches, for, even among men it can still be discovered by the thorough investigator. But that fashion‘ is still to conle,‘and I fear that these who expectievery womanto emulate the land girl and the window cleaner have long to wait. There is, let us realise, no reason in the nature of things why women Should wear skirts and men trousers. The old civilisation knew a gocid deal about comfort, and did some enduring work, kept botll men and women in ‘flowing robes or in short petticoats. The Roman despised the Gaul’s trouser. In the Near East women have worn tno-users for many a long year. But it is not generally believed that . the Turkish women found in brooches the royal road to the emancipation «of her sex. Some of us saw many years before we had land girls working in Swiss fields in trousers. But the rest of Switzerland, a suflieiently acute and energetic country, has not adopted the fashion. It is probable, if women remain in

possession of the more laborious occupations which they have (followed during the war (which does not seem like ly) that some portion of the sex may have working dress of breeehes. It is possible that the extension of wonlen’s employment in lighter tasks may assimihate their dress to the grimmer s3tyle of men. But there is little sign yet of the change. If it does come we may be confident that no one_will be a penny the worse or the better. Not by breeches -or pettieoat is the mind of breeches or pettiooats is the mind 0.1: changed. - y