The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1918-03-26
DOROTMY DIX TALKS
BY DOROTHY DIX
Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer.
kecDing Young.

Keeping Young.
OF all the idiotic and mischievous
cults that were ever foisted upon a
credulous world. the worst is the per-
petual youth cult.
We've made the preservation of our
callow and crude salad days an occu-
patton, faith, a religion. Everywhere
you go you are adjured to keep young.
The street cars shrek at you. from ad-
vertlsements. to preserve your youth in
SO and Sos massage cream Physical
culture instructors advise you how to
keep a boyish or a girlish figure by
means of their particular system of
exercise. Books, papers and maya
zines devote columns to urging you
to keep young by continual study. The
propagandists of new and optimistic
creeds assure you that you can keep
young by thinking young thoughts
and refusing to let your mind dwell on
the passing years.
It's youth, youth, youth! Everybody
is on a personally conducted Ponce de
Leon excursion to the sources of the
fountain of perpetual youth. You
would think from the popular attitude
on the subject that age was a crime.
to grow elderly the ultimate misfor-
tune and to be old the GROWING dis
grace of life.
Particularly is this the case with
women The poor dears have been
made to feel that age is a greater re-
Election on their chara cter than any
other scandal could be; that no hus-
bands love could be expected to stand
the strain of his wife having had fifty
birthdays and that when a woman can
no longer conceal the shame of having
gray hairs and crows feet that she is
done with the joy of life and had bet
ter be dead
1t is pathetic but true, that women
believe so blindly in this superstition
that youth is their one best bet-their
only bet-that they actually make
themselves old and haggard before
their time trying to took younger than
they are.
Never was there a more mistaken
idea in the world than that youth is
the time of supreme happiness 1t is
not. 1t is a time of sensitiveness, of
morbidness. of acute suffering. 1t is
a season of tempestuous emotioualism
when our very soul is torn to tatters
with griefs and disappointments that
we would not give a second thought
te'after We have got our second wind
and truer perspective on life.
As for a woman, youth, and particu-
larly the near youth period between
20 and 40. is a time of striving, strain
and struggle-a time of doubts and
fears. and despair when she is trying
to harden herself to meet the fate
that has been allotted to her instead
of having the fate of which she had
dreamed
No woman really has any peace of
mind. or body, or ever tastes the full
flavor of unalloyed bliss until she is
past SO and doesn't care who knows it.
she accepts age, and gives up the
struggle of trying to make people
think she is fifteen years younger than
she is
Think of the relief a woman exper-
fences when she doesn't have to be
massaged for wrinkles any more be-
cause she has arrived at the time of
life when woman is expected to have
wrinkles, and when they are simply
characte marks, and beautiful in
stead of being blcmishes,
Think of the bliss of not having to
maintain a waist line any more by
means of fasting, prayer and exercise.
because you are an old lady and it
doesn't make a bit of difference
whether you have forty-eight inch
| belt measure or an eighteen inch one,
| Think of the solid comfort of being
able to wear shoes big enough for your
feet, with flat heels, because you are
elderly, and they are the appropriate
thing to wear. Think of the delights
of carefree existence in which you can
| trail along two or three years after
the fashion, because you have passed
| into the age class, and do not have to
| hot foot it after the latest thing in hats
or gowns any more!
Think, o camouflaging sisters. of
being able to smash your rouge pot
and lose your powder rag, and wear
nice clean sop-and-water face done
more, Think of being forever done
! with the scalping irons and the hair
specialist, and having the privilege OF
doing your scanty locks up in a knot
| the size of a hickory nut, and skeWer-
ing 1t to the back of your head with
one pin,
j Think of being forever freed from
the tortures of the inquisition that we
women go thru trying to conceal our
age, and knowing that despite our bes,
efforts We are always under suspicion!
When YOU think of the mere bodily
lcomforts that age brings to women you
wonder that instead of setting bacR
the clock, we don't push it forward
and seize on the privileges and per-
quisites of age before we really have
a right to them.
And this without even casting q
hungry glance at the table, to whose
joys we have been stranger eFel
since we ascertained that our weigh
was steadily creeping up on US. The
annals of the agonies of starvation
that are the price of a slight and viii
Lowry figure at 40. are only writer
|; in the Book of Martyrs, and not th'
least of the recompense of age is pien
ty of mashed potatoes, gravy ant
chocolate cake.
Above all, no woman every reall.
knows the peace that passes all under
J standing until she reaches the time o
! life when men mean nothing in he
existence. and she doesn't care two
pence whether they admire her not
OF course most women never reacl
that age, even if they live to be a
old as Methuselah, which explain
why there are so few old women ant
contented women.
It's only after a woman realizes tina
she is too old for husband hunting
or husband keeping. that she has tim
to enjoy life, and enjoy men. an
when she can afford to weed out he
masculine acquaintance, and get Ri
of the Founders and the bores-
/ Nobody knows what a woman ha
! to endure in the years while she sit
! around looking pleasant, waiting 70