Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1923-04-19
DOROTHY DIX
DISCUSSES
LIFE
Grandmother's Dress and Actions
Weren't Sensible at All, Com
pared With Those of Her
Flapper Granddaughter
BY DOROTHY DIX

4 HIGH school debating society
~ is going to discuss the mo-
mentous question, Whether
Grandmother Dressed More Sensibly
| Than the Present.Day Girl Does,
and Whether Grandmother Was a
More Sensible Individual Than Her
Granddaughter Is?
| And one of the orators OF the &C.
casion wants me to help out on the
negative side of the proposition, and
assist her to prove how very, very
much superior grandmother was to
her degenerate, flapper granddaugh-
ter
I can't. The world do move, and
women have moved with it, and
with all of her faults, and they are
many, thick upon her bobbed hair,
1 think the girl of today is miles
and miles beyond the woman of
fifty or sixty years ago, and simply
ing ladies of sixty or seventy years
ago.
OF course, this is heresy. 1t is
the conventional thing to maintain
that our grandmothers were the en-
bodiment of every virtue. Fashions
We're sensible in their day. All
women were domestic and home-lov-
ing. All girls were demure and
proper, and preferred sitting at
home and darning stockings to going
to parties. Every girl was thrifty
and economical and fitted to make a
good wife. We know that all these
things are true because we have
been told them by grandmother her
self.
| Unfortunately, history doesn t
bear grandmother out. When grand
mother discourses about grand
daughters short skirts, and grows
eloquent about how iniquitous they
are, and how sensibly she dressed,
you have only to draw out an old
Godey's Book, or some other fash
ion magazine, to prove her words
! untrue.
They show grandmother in a
hoopskirt that took up as much
room as a circus tent, and that
made anything but the most sedate
locomotion inpossible.S Grand
mother couldn't have sprinted for a
street car-indeed, only two or three
of her could have ridden on street
car she was so ~voluminous-she
couldn't have done any of the thou
sands of things that girls do every
day. because she was bound and
hobbled by her clothes. Observe
also grandmother waist. Eighteen
| inches was considered a proper belt
measure, which means that she was
laced until she squeezed the very
life out of her. Indeed, when grand
mother is off the lecture platform,
she will tell you how she wet her
corsets and was laced into them by
strong-armed maid so as to get
the greatest amount of compression
out of them.
Mother also tells how sensibly she
| dressed, yet mother wore pounds of
false hair on her head, and a hustle
on her back, and skirts that swept
the streets, and sleeves so big that
she had to go through a door side
ways.
She, also, was laced to the limit
| of human endurance. Surely no
woman who remembers how her
back used to ache from the wire
| contraptions strapped upon it, and
how tired she used to get packing
around the 10 to Is pounds of hair
cloth and papier mache FUSED to
make her skirt and sleeves stand
OUT and who recalls how her arm
ached from holding up her sK1rt
every time she walked, can argue
that there was anything sensible
about the way she used to dress.
Perhaps girls wear their skirts
too short now. Perhaps they don't
wear enough petticoats. Perhaps
their bodices are too scant. But
their clothes are sanity itself com
pared with those of their mothers
and grandmothers. In her widest
moments the flapper never does
anything so silly as wearing hoop
skirts and microbe Catchers. Hell
movements are unhampered, and she
has parked her corsets in her bureau
drawer where they will do the least
harm.
Girls are more sensible in every
way now than they used to be. Why
if we were confronted with a girl O.
grandmother time now we'd con
slider her a moron. She would b.
as helpless as a baby. She wouldn'
know how TO do any one of the mil
lion and one things that every mod
ern girl knows how to do, and tina
we think nothing of because it l.
such a matter of course.
There are hundreds Of thousand
of girls II, and Is, and 10 years oil
who are not only earning their owl
livings but who are helping to sup
port their families. And it takes
lot Of intelligence to hold down an,
sort Of a job and do the kind of Worl
for which employers are willing t.
LAY. Furthermore, just the com
mon or garden variety Of girl is
capable little creature who can ge
a hundred cents out of every dollar
and rush the bargain counter, an
who at 20 is as shreWd and WOrldl
wise as grandmother is at 60. Like
wise, she can play golf and tennis
and sail a boat, and drive a car, an
trim a hat, and give a luncheon, an
organize a charity drive, and do
, thousand other things that requir
\ what New England country folks ca
f faculty" and that it took grand
mother half her lifetime to ac
quire.
The modern girl is more sensibl
in her relationship to men thai
grandmother was. Grandmother use
to sit around on the anxious sea
and wait on the off chance that tn
, man she wanted would come by an
notice her. and if he didn't, she die
of a broken heart. Granddaughter
a go-getter, and if she doesn't achiev
her hearts desire, she takes the mex
! best chance. Which is sound, CON
! mon sense.
, Granddaughter discusses topic
with men that were taboo even 2
years ago. It shocks us older ones
, but we can't de1y that ignoranc