The Washington herald., 1918-08-20


recent issue of American Medicine"
The Woman Citizen is bemoaning this: Wo-
men are liable to get pinched IL they wear red
hat or flirt or wear a low neck or carry swagger
stick, or wear short skirt with too light boots
They complain that the government wants women
to dress like superior parlor maids"
Read further what the Woman Citizen has to
say about it:
In different biological stages, writes this pess-
mistic physician, DIR. Talmey under the captain,
"The Psychology and Genesis of Female Clothes, ;"
different have been the vehicle of sex attrac-
ton. Our furry quadruped ancestors traced their
mates by scent The human male. like the male
bird, first strutted and preened in gaudy raiment
His the silken hose and lace fris to please the
eyes of ladies who looked passonatey out of little
Sits in castle walls and wanted him for their very
own.
Then grew busy selling hardware and but
ter and railroad shares and getting himself elected
to things; and he gave less and less attention to al
Turing the fair sex. He took what he wanted and
paid the price.
Now woman is getting too busy, what with the
war and one thing and another, to keep up the
stale pastime of dressing to please 1t begins
to look, suggests DR.. Talmey, dolefully, if the
allure business is beginning to bore everybody
Men found out long ago that it wasn't what it
was cracked up to be and wished it on the women
If women fall down the job it just naturally
looks as if there isn't going to be any race.
It's as bad as that, so the medical man says
The only hope is that some other sense will come
to the rescue, such tasting or hearing, for ex-
ample. Women may possibly be induced to 60
back to their old game Of cooking their way into
mems hearts, playing the ukelele under their
windows o nights to coax mems sense of hearing
Otherwise?-Well, that way annihiation lies
But DR.. Wilbur Crafts, of the International Re-
form Bureau, thinks there is enough and aplenty of
sex allure in womens clothes right now. He is
laundering against it in lectures all up and down
the land Quite recently he went to a convention
and told the lady Dunkard Quakers what he
thought about it And the ladies must have blushed
behind their little bonnets at the adjectves he used
Sa-la-cious was prime favorite with the reformer
He told the grayclad Quaker ladies that the clothes
of women in the great unregenerated world are
salacious-which seems to be exactly what Dr.
Talmey wants them to be.
So what in the of common is the
worried shopper with $4,000 in her handbag going
to do about it? She was just about fed up with
masculine advice before DR.. Crafts and DR.. Talmey
began pulling her two ways at once. There was
Mr.. Hoover, who neatly specified her housewifey
tasks and took day off to make her apron and
cap to do them in. And there the grocer
who wanted her to run out every morning and do
her errands. OF course he had thought up a
suitable costume for her to carry home all the
cereals she must buy in order to get enough flour
to thicken the gravy And the Red Cross with all
masculine official boards) demanded her hands free
to knit as she walked.
Then there was her own dear Uncle Sam, who
had just handed her out overalls and told her to
wear them for his sake.
All of these things she had done with becoming
alacrty for, just between friends there is harm
in saying that at a point of revolt
about those clothes which they had been expected
to wear to keep the instinct extant, and have
been ready to bolt any time since the civil In
fact, they rather suspect that large number of
commercial gentlemen have been capitalizing this
preservation business and pooling the profits at
women's expense. But when it comes to being
handed out adjective like salacious, the selfre
specting woman rises to explain that she bought
her last gown because it marked down to
S2o.5o, which was all the money she had, and then
only after she mad shopped all over the place to
find something else By that time she could not
have told sex appeal from Tom Thumb fringe. She
much interested in matching her best
hat, and she hoped the gown wouldn't shiny
nor accenuate the fact that she had lost her slim
silhouette long time since. Anyway it was the
best she could do for the money, and she was too
dead tired to go step further. As for her, the
biologic need to keep the extant could go
hang Only she wished to heaven the gown had
pockets and that it wasn't perishable and hadn't
many hooks and eyes to be fastened and to
come off and be sewed again.
And then and there she swore lively oath that
her next gown should be made with some relation
to the uses to which it was to be put Upon which
all the commercial gentlemen shuddered and turned
as pale as ashes. For what will become of our
business if women begin to demand that their
clothes shall be suitable?" And the medical gentle
men groaned, What will become of the racer"
And even the male reformers bit their nails and
sighed, 1--WE meant it to go as far as that"
Creen of the Garden