WOMEN WHO NEED A YASHMAK.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3140, 23 October 1922, Page 8

WOMEN WHO NEED A YASHMAK.

(By Charlotte I'". Hurghes). In a. certain American State it is, I believe, an offence against the law for a woman to powder her nose. Only the sense- of chivalry of a magistrate has prevented it from being an equally serious crime in this country for a young man to raise his eyes to those of a beautiful unknown. Y'et, in fairness, even a woman must admit that he who committed this heinous misdemeanor might, in these days, have sufficient excuse tor doing so. It is not only that women are today more beautiful than they have been for centuries, though this is obvious enough. A portrait gallery of modern women can show you every variety of loveliness from that of the frail Botticelli maiden to the silken, sleek-headed Parisiennes of dean Gabriel Domergue. Never did the poets and the painters .of old imagine a type that modern woman has not emulated it and improved on it. Any one who doubts this statement has but to book a stall at a West End revue, or take a twopenny ticket at an Underground station, and look around him. let, because romance and the worship of beauty are almost dead, let him beware of looking toa closely. Cone are the days ot knight-er-rantry, when men would embark on long and arduous journeyings merely to look on the face of a Helen or a Guinevere. The would-be troubadour of to : day is bidden to turn away bin eyes if he would avoid trouble. Woman's notorious inconsistency has surely never been more glaringly ck> monKtrated than in this instance. If one woman is annoyad 1 at reading unbounded admiration in the eyesi of a man, she has only the rest of her sex to blame. The majority of women were never so greedy, so avid of admiration, as they are_ to-day. They seek it, not only in their own intimate circles, hut wherever in the world they go. Never have their clothes been more provocative, their hair more carefully tinted and arranged, their complexions more expensive, their shoes and stockings more carefully chosen and exposed. The worst of so many modem women is that they will have their cake and eat it too. They have cast off the protection of their masculine tutors; thev demand to be allowed to go anywhere and do anything at any time of night or day, on their own. ' They despise male patronage, and, possibly, or pos.sibly not, unaware of the risks they run, expose themselves recklessly to the buffetings of life. Wlien men warn women they know what them mean. But women", more often than not, refuse to understand. So intense is their desire for conquest that they shun no risks, until suddenly, out of the blue, danger, imaginary or real, confronts them. Unable to cope with the situation in spite of their bold boastings, they have to call a policeman to defend' them. The woman who invariably reads v. sinister meaning into the admiring ghvviees of www has aw easy teswedSv at hand, Let her take refuge in the land of the yashmak and' seraglio, whepe the honest worship of feminine beauty is as unknown as the cbivalrv that prompts it. ...