I Just Go Brown

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 34, 4 November 1937, Page 5

I Just Go Brown

> . . and you ought to see my sunburn!" Thousands of people are saying; it not only saying it, but demonstrating it in the most embarassing fashion with unbuttonings and pleased smiles. There is nothing clever in getting sunburnt whether you always peel or "just go brown"—anyone can lie in the sun. Which brings up another point, the beach photograph. It is remarkable how a decently meek man in a white collar can become so aggressively athletic when he discards all covering other than a pair of bathing trunks. That would not be so bad if he did not insist on someone taking his photograph. Evenings in seaside cottages have a tendency to lag. The portable gramophone plays the same record

perhaps thirty times and then, in desperation, you take down the photograph album. Immediately there are revealed scores of seminaked groups of otherwise harmless people. They are all the same, grinning and triumphant in their manly poses; arms akimbo and simply radiating rugged manhood with one or two girls drooping languidly about them. This is the complaint of one who is pigeon-chested, spindle-shanked and whose bathing suit is still neck to knee, and who stays pearly white throughout the summer. Give me the good old days when you put on more clothes to swim than you did to walk. At least you can get a laugh out of those photographs of mother and father and not an overpowering sense of inferiority.—N.B.