THE MODERN GIRL.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 77, 31 March 1928, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE MODERN GIRL.

! Writing in the "Daily Mail" recently |a modern girl declared that there is a [considerable cult of wickedness nowadays. You would hardly dare to call a modern girl "good" to her face. Tt might very possibly be true, but the poor thing would be dreadfully mortified.

It is at least as difficult to be very bad as to be fairly good for a girl with a normal upbringing. How many of these modern maidens strive after wickedness and only achieve bad style? That it is unshockable is one of the proudest boasts of modern ignorance. When someone savs, as a preliminary to an anecdote, "I hope you are not easily shocked?" the addressee never contents herself with a mere, "Not so very," or "Well, suppose you risk it!" No, she laughs heartily and replies, "Why, I'm never shocked!"

Girls start in this fashion at quite an early age. You may often hear a sweet, silly, innocent little debutante, got up in slavish imitation of a chorus girl, encouraging some quite nice young man to tell her some not quite nicc storv. When she hears the story, either she does not understand that there is anything wrong with it, or she is heartily ashamed of not quite liking it, or she considers proudly that she is going up in the world, and after all it must be all right, as she is a friend of Angela's. In any case, she responds with a biieht <riggle. He, being too modern to know better, tells her another.

There is a sort of dismal humour about the sight of Nature's Good Little Girls trying to be rakish. They are not vicious, only silly.

As to the older girls, they all bark with no small energy, but comparatively few of them have much bite. Their conversation is as naughty as perseverance can makfe it. They discuss gloriously subjects that were taboo to the last generation. Some are not without wit and contrive to be very amusing.

In general, however, the spectacle of a lot of God's creatures sitting round a dinner table trying to think of remarks about bedrooms is something of an anaesthetic. Yet most of thein are probably very good sorts, even if the ladies are painted like pierrots and have not sufficient imagination to think for themselves. Tell them they are little devils and they will adore you.

I do not, of course, deny that there nro plenty of delightful creatures who still temper charm with discretion. I certainly do not deny that this ago has its fair allowance of real vice, quite tpart from the blatant cases of news>aper notoriety. There are, without loubt, a sufficiency of young women vho achieve this sought-for wickedness ««»ut the faintest effort. But I cones that it is not these so much ns the crude and com-' arat.vely innocuous disciples who catch •oticp B &r rh exc . lte 80 much unfavourable s naiurl? H^° rity 10 whom ully Jt 80 much more gracevirrs, h« le»«er »»i»aa« " m 0"