“NO CHARM OR TACT”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 June 1938, Page 4

“NO CHARM OR TACT”

GIRL UNDERGRADUATES CRITICISED.

“Most girl undergraduates here are devoid of womanly qualities, have no charm, tact, or poise, and their clothes are appalling.” declared Mr Woodrow Wyatt, editor of Oxford “Comment” (England), in a leading article recently. “You can tell a town girl from an undergraduate a mile away,” he declares. “The former is smart, tidy, and, if not pretty, she makes the most of her appearance. “The latter is wearing ill-fitting clothes, has a shiny face, untidy hair, and a sloppy, ungainly walk. “An undergraduate spends half her time working and the other half talking about undergraduates and getting hold of them.

“Once she has got hold of her wretched victim she either waits until he falls in love with her, then drops him, or else she falls in love with him and insists on the young innocent marrying her. “If women want to come to Oxford they must come as women, not imitation men. Let them cultivate grace and beauty and charm and leave undergraduates’ affairs alone. “In Oxford the women want it both ways. They want to be recognised as equal' in every way to the men, but they also want to be treated differentially as normal women.

“They bridle at «my suggestion that intellectually they are inferior. “They are furious if you would treat a male acquaintance. They expect to be taken to cinemas, given meals, and generally without doing anything in return.” The women reply through Miss Jean Cameron-Douglas, beautiful 20-year-old blonde undergraduate of Lady Margaret Hall. “Every year undergraduettes come up looking prettier and better dressed,” she asserts. “Oddly enough, the prettier they are the sooner everybody begins calling them gold diggers. We fall between two stools. If we do not do something to make ourselves attractive they call us ‘blue stockings,’ and if we do they call us ‘gold diggers.’ If young men waste their money on us, it is their own look-out. God did not give us beauty for nothing.”