"PLACARD MOUTHS"

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 21999, 4 January 1935, Page 3

"PLACARD MOUTHS"

THE USE OF LIPSTICK

WOMEN AND THEIR FROCKS

FATHER MARTINDALE'S VIEW

[FROM OUR OWN rOKRKSrONDFNT] SYDNEY, Doc. 28 Father Martindale, who has a worldwide reputation as lecturer and writer, has twice visited Australia. He has previously embodied his opinions of Australians in a book, and now, on his second visit, he has added a postscript, a portion of which is of particular interest to women.

"Dear ladies," he saj-s, "lipstick can only depersonalise you. Lipstick marks out the sort of mouth you would like to have, which is usually the mouth of someone else.' A placard mouth, and in colours that are placardish—well, it is a form of decoration not for me to quarrel with. I even know a lady who used dark green and purple powders for special effects. This was not uninteresting, though, true, she later migrated to a drug asylum, but I believe she is out again and prancing around.

"Most of this, apart from fashionable frocks, which I am convinced that women use not to attract men, because they do not, but to annoy other women, is a form of self-advertisement. If its girlhood goes rotten, a nation has no hope for any future. I do not supposo yours will do so. They will risk it the less if they are sure, as I am, that modern youth in older countries is definitely trying to return toward selfcontrol after a wasted period of laxity." Another visitor who had pungent comments to pass on modern fashions was Lady Baden-Powoll, who said that cocKtails and lipsticks were entirely artificial and decadent. To her they were like a red rag to a bull. She also criticised backless bathing costumes. If people liked to display their naked bodies, she said, it was their look out, but she believed that a woman's natural instinct was to be modest, and to do all things in moderation.