MORALITY AND CLOTHES

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 8736, 19 May 1914, Page 6

MORALITY AND CLOTHES

To the Editor “N.Z. Times.” Sir, —The proposal of the City Council to limit bathers at Lyall Lay to the "Canadian, costume will be voted by aU sea bathers to be wrong.' 1 f Canadian costume last season, and imund that in swimming m discarded watei the kilt tended! to catch on the hand doing the “low stroke,” and so interfere with one's position in the water. At LyaU .Hay, particularly, where a swimmer s life may depend on, a very little more qr less facility in the water the usual neca to knee' costume is by far the best. I know a few people with horrid thoughts in their minds, piohably the result of some horrid* ways of their own, have written rotten things about the beautiful young men and young women who bathe in the apa at Lyall Bay, and who get health and strength and courage for the week’s work from lying in tne sun’s rays and getting brown. But it is only horrid people who could see anything wrong in that —the young people are all light, only they are a generation ahead .of those who criticise .them and don't understand their ideal. Why should bathers wear kilts? There is nothing unlovely about the shape ol the human body that it is advisable to hide under a kiit. It. Is not clothes that make people "moral”—the most “moral" people in the world, the Zulus, wear no clothes. The conventional morality, ■ dear to the heart of Mrs Grundy and her disciples, doubtless considers "the human form divine” immoral unless it has a kilt or a fig-leaf on. How nice it would have been for those dear kind people if God had thought of that at the creation ! X think if your council contents itself by insisting on bathers changing the colour of the middle third of their bodies to show Mrs Grundy that if she went closer she would see nothing but stockingette, it will he doing its duty to convention. Lyall Bay has been compared to Manly beach in Sydney—to show the immorality of it. I know nothing about Manly, except from some photographs of bathers, which gave me a good idea of the beauty of the young Australians, but I do know that the girls who go bathing on our shores in neck-to-knee costumes are not immoral—they are good sports and’ enjoy the bathing, and the sun, and the company on the beach, and they are better people, not worse, because of it. X have studied the matter ever since four beautiful girls came to Eastbourne and shocked the immoral hypocrites there by bathing in stockingette tights, and sunning themselves on the sand. There is far too much fuss in the world about clothes —women’s clothes are a relic of her slavery—she must dress always so that every man knows she is a woman. She might become free if occasionally she were allowed to be simply a human being with no clothes —suggestion of sea. At present our social edifice is so absolutely dependent upon what people think! And what people think is almost absolutely dependent upon what they think their neighbours will think, that a somersault by someone at the top—say, the king, or some leading variety artistmight cause, easily, the whole of the social organism to loop the loop and upend Mrs Grundy entirely. But the old true race instinct sill remain—the pure ideal sport which those beautiful ones who still beep their child spirit, retain—and while Mrs Grundy is still standing on head in the sandhill shrieking for fig leaves or Canadian kilts, that spirit on our shores will keen the young people’s ideals good in spite of her.—X am, etc., F. WALLACE MACKENZIE. Wellington, Mav 18th.