The Washington times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1902-1939, 1919-07-20

Of skin.
Now let us consider for a moment
the question-is a bare back i'm
proper? Wells it? What is it
after all but cuticle, moulded in
certain curves by muscle and bone
beneath il, fine grained or coarse
grained, charmingly tinted or not
so charmingly tinted. l myself be-
heve it is only improper when it is
ugly-but that is neither here nor
there.
What is there about the presen-
tation Of it that is improper?
Someone has said that morals are
a matter Of geography. / don't ex-
actly believe that, but do believe
that the matter of how much or
how little Of the human body is
proper or improper to show de-
cidedly is-geography and also q
little element of time. It is, or,
rather, was, until recently, shameful
for Turkish woman to show either
face or hands. She had to be swathed
ike mummy from head to foot be-
fore men not Of her household. The
ancient Carthaginian- woman could
90 almost unclad so long as her hair
was covered. The Java girl is
skirt and a couple of long, spirally-
wound copper leglets and bracelets.
If she is seen without those bracelets
she is as badly of as we are in those
awful dreams when we enter a troll
ley car with nothing on but pajama
Jacket. l might multiply instances by the
hundred.
After all, what is proper or Improper il
largely in the eye Of the beholder.
Speaking purely philosophically. I do not
believe that bare back is improper per Sc.
If the spectacle shocks, ii is because it is
new to the eve. When the eye gets used
to it the bare back will cause no more
sensation than a bare hand When that
happens fashion will have to make II barer
or ingeniously cover it up.
How, you ask, can fashion make 1t barer
and how much farer? You can answer
that question as well as / can. Back in
ancient Greece the. girls wore robes that
in walking revealed the leg up to the waist
and nobody held up their hands or wrote
tracts about IL. In the time of Louis the
Fourteenth Of France the decolletage was
far'below what we would unhesitatingly
call the limit-but no one seemed to no
tice il.
They had a very fine civilization in
sculptures and wall paintings show, wore
dresses that wouldn't look amiss in Fifth
avenue-and their decoIlptage the court
OF Louis the Fourteenth might have copied
as a model. OF course, the court didn't.
But it all shows that the human mind
keeps milling around in the same old
groove. And when you get used to a thing
something new is provided-only it isn't
something new. it's the same old thing they
thought new a thousand years ago when
they got tired of the same old
thing.
l except from this the bare
back as it appears in fashion
to-day In the absence Of evil
dence to the contrary, that does
seem new as it is now being pre-
scented. There are no sculptures &
of paintings or remains. so far
as / know, that show II is an
article of fashion in any age.
They did have something like it
in the tenth dynasty of Egypt.
But at the same time they had an utter alb
sence Of decolletage-I mean their dresses
began from the waist and ran down. So
that is hardly a comparison.
If a back is pretty, charmIngly curved,
beautifully textured and colored-why not
Than 10 tho 70 NJ fashion IN