THE "TYPICAL" GIRL

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 132, 7 June 1939, Page 20

THE "TYPICAL" GIRL

A DANGEROUS PHRASE

' The people responsible for the now famous A.R.P. poster found what they describe as a. "typical English girl." but have they even begun to emerge from the difficulties in which they plunged themselvcf by first accepting and then rejecting a face which seemed to- many people very suitable to the purpose of the poster? asks the "Manchester Guardian." There is a whole series of possible objections waiting for them now. In the first place, it may well be asked whether "English" is the proper word unless the poster is to be used only in England in the narrower sense. Those who are liable to be "exposed to correspondents" know how dire a crime it is to use the word "English" to include Scottish, and there is evidently a growing feeling of the same kind in Wales. How much trouble the organisers might have saved' themselves by using the words "typical British girl."

But would they? Are they not anyhow exposed. to a new controversy? Nobody cares much when some young woman gets into the news and is described by a sob-sister as a "typical English girl," but this is a different and almost official designation. And has anyone defined successfully a typical English girl? What are the features? What is the colouring? What is the shape of the face? Have typical English girls large mouths or small ones? In one newspaper recently an English girl was described as-having "classical, almost Slavonic, " features." How puzzling it all seems. .