WHY WOMEN SHOULD FLIRT

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXXII, Issue 2803, 20 November 1931, Page 2 (Supplement)

WHY WOMEN SHOULD FLIRT

One should coquette, but in a nice way, Dorothy Mackaill avers — And Richard Barthelmess wants to know what “nice” means--Loretta Young holds that girls could not stop if they tried. (Wilton Chalmers. Hollywood _ interviewer, records these opinions gleaned from the film favourites.) Three movie stars— Dorothy Mackaill, Richard Barthelmess and Loretta Young—each received a telegram one morning, couched in these words: “Do you flirt, and how? Meet mo for interview over teacups, at i Brown Derby, on Friday at four.— I (Signed). Wilton Chalmers.” : To make a long story short, all rei ported at this popular restaurant, and 1 for a start there was an awkward pause. “Well, Miss Mackaill, why the embarrassment,” quoth Mr Chalmers, with what he considered a disarming smile of encouragement. “It’s only an interview, after all, I’ve never seen any of you embarrassed before.” “I am embarrassed,” laughed Dorothy Mackaill. "If I should tell women to flirt, they may say ‘the hussy.’ And if I tell them they shouldn’t, they’ll say, ‘the hypocrite, what else does she do in her pictures?” "Well, when it’s all said and done,’ continued Miss Mackaill, “women must flirt, willy nilly. It’s the weapon given her by nature, as to all females of the animal kingdom. Flirtation and coquetry—the second seems to be a little more self-conscious than the first— is nature’s way of ensuring the propagation of the species. Let us be blunt about it. Of course, human beings always take their spite out against the laws of nature. In this case they have made, in many cases, flirtation an end in itself.” “Yes, indeed,” agreed Dick Bartludmess, breaking in to air his views of the subject. “Yes, indeed, I have seen, in a long life and over many continents, women who flirted, even when there was no obvious necessity . . . married women, in fact.” “You interrupted my interruption, Loretta Young admonished. “I was going to say, that according to good morality, girls should not flirt. And yet where would the poor girl be—or even the rich one—who didn’t use her feminine wiles to capture the male!" “The answer is, probably home, with her parents, where all girls should be,

again according to the copy book maxims,” said Dorothy. “Every woman should flirt, and I’ll tell you why. In addition to the natural reason I gave, the law of nature, you know, flirtation is good for the suul. It keeps a woman young and interested, both in herself and in others, and I don't mean valetudinarians. A girl who flirts is apt to pay some attention to her person and her dress, for just imagine the predicament of a girl who was an eflicient flirt, but whose clothes were dowdy and painful to the eye.” “Yes,” agreed Loretta. "And you’ve got to back up your powers of flirtation by being an agreeable companion, able to talk and charm. That is, unless you are the baby typo, heaven help us, who yesscs her man right and left.” "Of course,” continued Dorothy, “tho girl should flirt in a nice way. She shouldn’t go too far. A little flirtation freshens the psyche; too much of it gets a person into deep water. There is coquetting and coquetting.” "Ah, you think a girl should flirt in a nice way.” This from Biirthelmess. "But which is the nice way? One girl might think she's gone too far if she as much as let her eyes languish more than usual. While another may think she’s not going too far if she offers a liberal display of—oh, well, of this and that.” The group laugh amusedly at the Bathc’.messian circumlocution. “Just pure laziness, my not going into details,” vouchsafed Dick. “ I could describe, if I cared to. Flirtation is, as Miss Mackaill says, nature’s method of selecting ii mate. It is a woman’s way of attracting attention, getting herself won. But tho question remains: Should « woman continue to flirt after she has won her man?” "She certainly should, if sho expects to keep her man,” Loretta hurried to interject. “Imagine the predicament of a girl who landed her fish, and I don't mean the watery variety, and then called it a day and refused to do more flirtation. Tho man would tire before he had time to go on his daily round.” "It isn’t a question of what women should do, it’s what they can’t help doing,” said Dorothy. "Flirting is a. sort of inner exercise, as beneficial to the soul as swimming and tennis are to the body. Tho muscles of the psycho can get lax, the same as tho body. Coquetry is a sort of love making, and love is the core of life.” "In which case, divorce is tho rind,” Dick interrupted. "Have you noticed that more or less staid wo-