Sense Under The Shingles

NZ Truth, Issue 1001, 31 January 1925, Page 7

Sense Under The Shingles

Flappers Do Not All Flop

In reply to the Fable of "The Flapper who Flapped Finely but Finally Flopped," one who admires the jazz (m moderation) and the flapper (with reservations) writes picturing the modern » maiden (as he sees her) arid the stay-at-home miss (also as he sees her) :

Once upon a time — not so vory long ago either- — there lived a modest maiden with the soft eyes of the ingenue she was. And she was carefully preserved as such. Her father was a studious, myopic gink, and her mother played the violin divinely, and her crochet work was unexcelled for painstaking excellence. The girl's hair was never shingled, she knew nothing of the garish show, and from what she heard of it she never wanted to. Once, by a peculiar chance, a copy of "Truth" came into her hands, and she read the Fable of the "Flapper who Flapped Finely, but Finally Flopped."

It ■ was her immediate conclusion then — how else could it be with one so immature? — that all shingled-haired girls who went dancing were on the straight road to perdition. She didn't know many. The girl next door was the one she knew best — a pretty girl with shingled hair (oh terrible!) who was often at dances. Indeed, she was a beautiful jazz dancer. Earlier she had been a fancy dancer, and had gathered a poise and confidence on the floor that made her the most sought after girl at every ball she attended. She had a host of admirers, and a squad of suitors, this girl. She was often at theatres. Used to company, she was seldom at a loss. Her conversation was bright, vivacious. ■

She knew how to dress, and was smart at , needlework. Envious g.jrls, particularly the dowdier ones who bought everything ready made, said it would ' cost a man " all his wages to dress her. In reality it cost her less to dress herself than it cost the aforesaid dowdy ones to pay someone else to dress them. She knew she was good-looking, did this shingle-haired girl. She realised exactly what her vivacity and her good looks were worth to her m point of the entertainment that suited her youth. But she knew equally as well — and the knowledge held no terrors for her— that her youth and freshness were tumsient, and that her ultimate happiness rested m marriage arid the matronly joys. Because she jazzed and accepted the attentions of men, she was not robbed of her maternal instinct. Why should she be? As a child she had fondled dolls just as eagerly and dressed' them twice as prettily as the girl next doori who

hadn't learnt to jazz and whose few boys were ho:>elessly uninteresting. There was much talk, and she heard it all, of books on sex-hygiene and the psychology of sex attraction, but she had no occasion, even though she had the inclination and opportunity and did read two or three, to pore over such stuff and decide with whom she should mate" and who should be the father of the children she hoped some day to mother. Home freedom, the confidence of her parents, and associations m the outside world had given her a contact' with things as they are, and the opportunity to study mankind according to Pope's dictum that "the proper study of mankind is man." She was able then to differentiate between the jazz-baby and the man, and to distinguish the mefitricious from the genuine. She knew — as she had to, or perish, m such surroundings-^-the advances of the purely lascivious. There were all around her, no doubt, girls who didn't, girls who mistook suavity for sincerity, and swallowed the simulated admiration of the professional wooers m doses that drugged them into helplessness. But she was a wise girl m her generation. .

But those who fell m cabarets, shingled and sparsely clad, fell no- more sadly than our secluded miss, who, until she reached maturity, had looked out on a world of which she knew nothing 1 and imagined to be habited by wild beasts clad m evening dress who prowled cabarets m search of feminine prey. The time came when she went forth into the world too, clad securely (the poets would have it thus) m the armor of her virtue. But was it invulnerable? Not a bit of it. Through it the shafts of flattery cut as through cardboard. Unused to the honeyed words of the roue, practised m soft-voiced cajolery, always attentive, she mistook him straight off the reel to be the very gallant m whom she could repose the confidences of her fluttering little heart, and on whose manly bosom she might lay her little head and let the rest of the world go by m sweet content. She did so, and the fall of the cabaret girls who fell was never so great as the terrific descent and bitter disillusionment of the girlie who knew nothing and expected everything — of man. "K."