The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1921-07-06
Dorothy Dix Tails
By DOROTHY DIX
Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer.

The Flapper and the Young Person.
After all, what is there really SO
much wrong with the modern girl?
Look at the way she dresses, you say,
skirts to the knee, no corsets, waist no
more than the proverbiaf fig leaf
Well, isn't modesty in dress merely q
matter of custom? A South Sea Island
belle considers herself completely
gowned in a few strings of shells. An
Indian woman can expose every other
part of her person with perfect pro-
priety provided that her face is yelled
And no one can deny that we are
becoming so acclima tized to the abb
breviated petticoat that it is fast be-
coming as decent as the old fashioned
trailing street sweeper and microbe
catcher. A woman's ankles were only
interesting when it was improper for
just as frankly in evidence as arms
nobody gives second glance.
Another thing that horrifies US ED
ers is the frankness of conversation
between the boys and girls of today.
They have no reserves. No delicacy
women discuss subjects only sacred to
husbands. and wives and midwives.
subjects that not even a girls own
mother could have brought herself to
whisper to her. It makes our hair
stand on end to hear a bIue-eyed lit
number of children she intends hav-
ing, Or a manly youth aver that when
he pops the question to a girl that he
will file his health certificate along
with his proposal.
Yet, in all honesty, are not the
youth blazing a straight trail to travel
with this frankness. instead of
laundering into sloughs in the dark as
we did with our reticence. which made
us clamp the seal of silence down
upon fundamental facts of life? We
ignored the things it was of most i'm
portance to US to know. The boys and
girls of today face them, erudely and
brutally, perhaps, but they at least
know where they stand.
Furthermore, there is no doubt that
because she~is so wise, so disjllusion-
ingly wise 1t seems to us, the modern
young girl is a million times better
able to protect herself than her
mother was. Ignorance never yet
was innocence. 1t is the undoing of
innocence.
We mourn that the young girls OF
today have no ideals. They have not
ours, but they have their own mode,
and 1t includes those who will suffer
and be strong, and weep and forgive
the husbands who are tyrannical and
cruel and stingy. But there will be
partners and comrades to the men
they marry, and there will be fewer
winners and naggers.
For the modern young couple
marry without illusions. and with a
pretty shrewd idea of the bargain
they are getting. Hence they are less
liable to make mistakes than their
parents were
Whether the girl of today is an
| Improvement on her grandmother OF
not, let those say who can decide be-
tween the relative merits of hoop
skirts and knee length skirts, and
can tell whether they prefer a girl
who faints at the sight of a drop OF
blood, or one who can assist sur
geon in 4 major operation, as thou
sands of flappers did during the war
without the CULVER of an eyelash.
At any rate the new girl is with
US to stay.
The chickens have flown to the
| coop forever.
| copyright, 1921. By the wheeler Cyndicate
| Incl