The Indianapolis times., 1930-02-20
ChaberOnS
Are Taking
Back Seats
BY HORTENSE SAUNDERS,
MA Service Writer

MA Service Writer
NEW YORK. Feb. 21.-Nice girls
pet, and expect to be petted. Few
of them swear, but they rather
admire the man who has an ade-
quate and ingenious vocabulary.
Lies are considered as necessary
social expedients.
Chaperons are an institution
of benefit only to the very young
for girls have learned that chiv-
airy is not dead at all, but simply
has gone modernistic.
Unless 10000 young folks can
be wrong, these things are true,
and many another surprising tran
sition has come out of the jazz age.
Having hastened the decline and
fall of Mrs. Grundy, the younger
set now has set up its own social
government. and written its own
declaration of independence.
Social Forms Change
Ouestionnaires concerning the
behavior Of men and women at
theaters, proms, night clubs, house
parties and all the complex social
situations of the day were broad
cast through the land by Doris
Webster and Mary Alden Hopkins,
New York authors.
They quizzed college students,
social registrites and representatives
OF cultured society from Maine
farms TO Louisiana plantations,
from Beacon street to Telegraph
Hill.
The answer they received con-
firmed their theory that social
form has changed radically with
the general speeding up OF mod
ern life.
Take. for instance, the matter
of swearing before women. 1t has
never been mentioned before. and
now is not indorsed unqualifledly
by the younger set, the southern
element being still conservative.
But the consensus is that 1t de-
pends upon the women themselves.
If YOU couldn't swear at least as
well as they could, it would be
better to forego the profanity.
One bright young man said he
ALWAYS held back his best lines be-
cause girls are sharks at pickup
and he tried to keep them from
lifting his best phrases.
Girls we're almost unanimously
against swearing, except a group
from Park avenue, who said
Sure"
81 trv not to swear in front of
men. I don't think they like
girl who does" said one girl. Co
eds. it appeared, were mostly
against this form Of expression.
Nice Girls Do Pet
Petting came up for consider
able attention. and the men showed
much more emotion on the sub
iect that women. Violently in
decd did most of them declare that
NICE GIRLS DO PET.
A few felt that there should be
some limitation. but the majority
we're opposed to any drastic dis
armament.
A young man from Back Bay
stood quite alone on the subject.
He said: Il do not know whether
or not nice girls pet. but I do know
I would be preiudiced against one
who did"
To the question: do you feel
free to put your arm around a girl
with whom you are not in love?"
the replies we're uniformly in the
affirmative. Certainly" wrote one
college student, furnishing his own
exclamation point,
Cnaperou Nearly Out
Girls admitted that the chaperon
still exists, but with her influence
greatly diluted, and that she should
be put up with at mixed weekend
parties. formal dances, for late par
ties in a mans apartment, trips to
BOYS schools and wherever parents
or college authorities insist upon il"
Asked to define the chaperon'S
function in modern life. one girl
replied that chaperons were per-
missible for the very young, say up
to Is years. and another answered
simply: They were for Brats.'