The Ocala evening star. [volume] (Ocala, Fla.) 1895-1943, 1921-07-16
ISN'T TT TIME TO STOP 1T

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all the papers and magazines, write
95 per cent of the news and opinions,
about four-fifths OF the fiction, poetry
and drama, and all but an infinites-
imal part of the scientific and techni-
cal reading. In literature, man has a /
giants power, and he has used it like
a giant.
The most picayunish of the many
small ways in which man has used
his pen and printing press has been
in his constant references to woman's |
clothes. We think it possible that
Adam made no facetious remarks |
about Ewes figleaves, but il he didn't |
it was because he didn't know how
And we wouldn't be surprised to find
out on judgment day that the sainted
Abel was more sophisticated than his
pa in that respect.
At any rate in all the writings of
men, from the days of cuneiform brick
to these, when the flying presses turn
off tens of thousands of pages per
hour, there appears strong tendency
to comment on the garb of women,
most of the comment unfair, a good
deal of it indecent. And to the best
of this scribe's knowledge the afore-
said tendency has never been so rot
ten or SO prevalent as it is now.
Pick up almost any newspaper and
you viii find large proportion of its
space given TO remarks about wom-
ems dress, about their stockings and
skirts, their low-cut bodices, insinua-
tions not only about their most inti-
mate garments but about what they
conceal.
Isn't it time for gentlemen to stop
this, and isn't it time for gentlemen
to make blackguards stop it?
It would make any man mad to hear
coarse remarks made about his wife,
his sister, his sweetheart or girl
friend. We win not put the mothers
in the category for vile remarks about
them are unthinkable. And every
WOAIldH S1dHQS SdGIG0 LII SO1AC HAL
mind
The only immodesty in the female
form exists in the minds of men. They
are as God made them. or as scientists
would say as they have evoluted from
lower forms of humanity. They are
cleaner in mind and heart today than
ever before in the history of the
world.
Why should not our leading publ
cations start movement to elimi-
nate from print coarse jokes and sly
insinuations about the garb and shape
of women? It would take mighty
few months, il they all worked to-
gether, to put taboo on the subject.
Many little boys of ten or even less
make remarks about the girl friends
of their relatives, and sometimes
about their own relatives, that are as
bad as anything libertine could say.
Why? Because they hear similar re-
marks from men. or read them. There
are mighty few boys of ten now who
cannot read and understand print.
If the little ones now beginning TO
toddle were brought up in communi-
ties where they never heard indecent
remarks about their mothers and sis
tiers, and other women and girls, they
would see nothing immodest nor un-
usual in short skirts and low cut
waists and would look on women-s
legs as nothing more than useful con-
nections between their knees and their
feet. For of a truth that is all they
are, except often things of beauty
and symmetry for the eye of the
artist to dwell upon with delight I'M
tainted by any lewd thought.
"Honi soft qui NAL y pense." To
the pure all things are pure. Let all
of US great journalists funigate our
minds, as preparation for deoder-
izing the minds of others.