Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1923-01-20
DOROTHY DIX
DISCUSSES
LIFE
THE YOUTH FETISH
BY DOROTHY DIX

thing in the world is the fetish
women make of youth. To re-
tain even the semblanee Of it they
go through sufferings that they
would not enC3re to secure their
souls salvation. In it's name they
commit innumerable sins of good
taste, common sense and veracity.
To flatter a woman TO death you
| have only to guess her age at ten
years under her actual number of
birthdays. To convince her that
you are the most charming and de-
lightful individual in the world, and
the one with the finest discernment
and judgment, you have only to tell
lettering grandma that you mistook
her for her flapper granddaughter.
Now there are TWO, pitifuI things
about WOmen's worship of youth,
and the frantic struggle they make
tsO keep young. The first is that no
woman can preserve her youth be-
You'd a definite time limit. The
second is that in trying to appear
young when she is no longer youth
full, a woman misses the joy of
youth that she cannot bring back.
and loses the peace and happiness
of age that she refuses 70 accept.
She literally falls between the stools.
More fool she, for middle age is
the golden period of a woman's life,
il only she has intelligence enough to
realize it. Not youth nor beauty
is so much to be enVied as the state
Of the woman who has emancipated
herself from the fear of age, and
who is frankly, honestly and I'M
ashamedly as old as she is and
doesn't care who knows it.
Middle age is the time of privi-
1eges, Of surcease from struggling,
of freedom; a time when ones age
justifies one in doing all those
things she wants to do, and excuses
her from not doing the things she
doesn't want to do.
Just as a mere illustration Of the
joys middle age offers when it ceases
to pose as a debutant, take the
matter of physical comfort. To myr-
lads of suffering women who are
fair, fat and past forty, it would be
heaven on earth just to have an
other square meal, and to wear a
corset that didn't choke the very
not make every step an agony.
The key to paradise is in their
own hands. They have only to ac-
cept their ages, and realize that no.
body, and especially no living man,
knows or cares whether they are a.
thirtysiX or fifty-six, or whether
they wear IA or number
5-E shoes. 1t is only after we pitch
our bloom-of-youth jar out of the
window and let our Titan locks go
back to their natural grizzled state
that I'VE know what the real joy of
living is.
The peace that passes all under
standing comes to a woman when
| she frankly admits that for her the
| husband hunt is over, and that
| there is no use in trying to look like
a coy young girl any longer. She
has either captured her man, or she
| ISM going to get zone, and, at any
rate, at middle age she has to have
1 some other bait than her looks to
succeed as a fisher of men, so she
| might as we'll have the comforts
| that belong to her time of life.
Many women who make figures
| of fun of themselves by acting kit
| tenish and wearing chicken feathers
long after they are superannuated
old cats and tough old hens, excuse
their idiocy on the ground that they
are trying to keep young in order
to retain their husbands affections.
| Why cannot these poor silly crea-
lures realize that by the time a man
has been married to a women for
| thirty years he either loves her for
something a thousandfold better
| than a peaches-and-cream Complex
ion and a girlish figure, or else he
! doesn't love her at all.
An inch more or less in his wife's
Waistline will not raise or lower the
| temperature of a middle-aged man S
| love, nor can any woman hold any
man with a corset string.
| Socially, a woman is at her best
at middle age. She is worth talking
to and listening to, for she is like
| Kady Kew's daughter whom Thack-
cray describes as being forty years
old, and having heard all there is
to tell. Among the most sought aft
er people we know are women like
| that-fat and comfortable, shrewd
and worldly, humorous and enter
tanning, splicing their conversation
with the experiences of years that
| they ~ not lIN " uIklS.
| EmOtiOnally middle age is the mil
| lennium of life for a woman, be-
cause she has lost the pOignancy of
! youth, and has not yet come to the
deadening of the sensibilities by age.
1t is the time of philosophical enjoy
| ment, if only she could make up her
mind to skim the cream off OF today
instead of crying over the split milk
Of yesterday.
In youth, love makes up the sum
| of a Woman's existence; but by the
| time she has reached middle age
| she has discovered that there are a
great many other things in the world
beside sentiment, and that one can
| live and have a very good time, even
if one is not thoroughly understood
and has missed her real soulmate.
The young wife tears her hair and
| calls on heaven to witness that she
is the most miserable of her sex be-
| cause her husband fails to come up
! to her ideal of what a romantic hero
and a demigod should be. The mid
| dle-aged woman has laid her regrets
for what-might-have-been away in
| lavender; and while she admits to
herself that possibly her husband is
not all that she could wish, she set.
| ties herself back comfortably in her
| limousine and reflects on the value
| of the law Of compensation.
Age is a WOman's enemy only
when she fights it. 1t becomes her
best friend when she receives it with
open arms, but you will never per-
! suade any woman of the advantage