Personal And Public Tidiness

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 109, 10 May 1943, Page 2

Personal And Public Tidiness

When a woman member proposed at a Wellington Hospital Board meeting the other day that they should provide beauty parlour facilities for the staff, there was a laugh, but apparently that laugh came from the novelty of the idea, and did not indicate disapproval. The member, Mrs. Knox Gilmer, pointed out that By Cyrano other hospitals, and the army, provided such facilities, and the British Ministry of Health strongly approved service on the spot, but at the Wellington Hospital,, "we have a huge staff of five hundred nurses and others who have to rush away to beauty parlours for 'hair-dos' and so on ; " She was congratulated on her proposal, and it seems that the board is to see what can be done. The Order of the Day And why not? Smartness is the order of the day for both sexes. A soldier is expected to shave every day, get his hair cut, and generally look smart. I don't Know much about camps, but I take it he doesn't go out of camp in droves to visit the barber. Girls in uniform take just as much care of their appearance as they did before they joined up; m<Jre, I should say, because they have come under a new influence, pride of regiment. It seems to be common sense that women in barracks should be provided with facilities for keeping up this standard, and if this is done in the army, why not also a big institution like a Jiospita? A nurse is a uniformed worker, whose calling makes a special demand for cleanness and neatness. A hairdresser's shop on the premises saves a lot of time in these days of labour shortage. Incidentally, Mrs. Gilmer's proposal illustrates the value of women on governing bodies, especially, those who have a number of women in their employ. This is the sort of thing that probably wouldn't occur to a man. Yet so hard does the habit die of leaving everything to men, that during this war the British Government proposed to leave a question touching uniformed women's clothes to a committee composed entirely of men. Of course the women in the Commons protested. If there hadn't been women in the House the blunder would have passed unnoticed. When It Was Long Other times, other manners. The practice among women of going regularly to the hairdresser is one of the many social changes of the last thirty years or so. It came in with short hair. When I was young it was quite uncommon for a woman to have her hair "done" by a professional. She wore it long, let it down at night, and put if up in the morning. We talked of a girl "putting her hair up" when she "came out." It was like the "toga virilis" which the young Roman put on when he reached manhood. Now the girl doesn't put up her hair, because it is already short. What she does, so a mere man may presume, is to start having it treated by a hairdresser. Whether girls still at school go in for this treatment it is not for me to say. In the old days poems were written on women's tresses. "Thy perilous hair," said one lover. Isn't there a fairy story about a girl letting down her hair from a window, and the young man using it to climb up by? Now, however, we may adapt Pope's line and say, "Beauty draws us with a shingled hair."

Do many regret the change? No doubt something has been lost; it always is in a revolution. But when I think of-to-day's legions of wellturned out girls and women, I see a marked improvement in general appearance, and much of this is due to the greater care taken of the hair. Smartness is much more widely spread than it used to be. Women are better groomed than men. There are, of course, extravagances. The sight of some lips recalls the advertisement of a shaving soap: "How do you like our soap, sir?" "Best I ever tasted." And there is the atrocity of blood and black-red finger nails shaped into talons. I wonder whether, if women knew the comments that men pass on this form of adornment, they would go on using it. Untidy Streets It is a natural and necessary transition from personal tidiness and smartness to tidiness in public places. This also is a topic of the hour. There has been a good deal of comment an the state of streets in these days. Streets never were as tidy as they should have been, but there seems to. have been a considerable deterioration of late. Certainly the streets with which I am familiar present a distressing spectacle, especially in the mornings about office time. The gutters are littered with tram s tickets, bits of wrapping paper and tobacco cartons, and one sees beer bottles, intact or smashed. This smashing must often be deliberate.

Servicemen are blamed for much of this litter, and I suppose some of the responsibility is. theirs. If so, it is a curious contradiction that men who are trained to be tidy in camp should break out like this when they are on leave. Perhaps, however, the very r-elease from restraint produces a desire to kick over the traces; all of us at some time or other experience a similar urge. But I am not concerned now with servicemen so much as with civilians. I may repeat what I said in an article some time ago, that many men and women treat public places quite different from their own homes. They wouldn't drop rubbish- on their own paths, but they do so in the street. I mentioned seeing a woman, in appearance most tidy, open a letter in the street, take out the contents, and drop the long envelope in the gutter. The other day I saw a man, standing so close to a rubbish receptacle that he nearly touched it, throw away *a cigarette container. An Easter vizitor to a papular holiday resort near Wellington, reports that the track to a bush beauty spot was marktfl by a 'line of cigarette packet?, chocolate wrappers, paper bags, and ice cream cartons, varied with larger cardboard boxes used to hold party lunches. One could tell where the caravan had rested. In England this sort of thing is punishable, and the law is invoked. Why not follow this example? Everybody's Property A better course, however, is to try to create a wholesome public opinion, which will decree that such things are not done. It is surely inconsistent to encourage personal tidiness and gaod grooming, and to •be listless about litter in public places. By.all means let us provide facilities for somen's "hair-dos," but •what about the hair and face of the landscape, which is the property of us all?