CIGARETTE PAPERS.

Southland Times, Issue 21578, 16 December 1931, Page 6

CIGARETTE PAPERS.

MALE CONSERVATISM. At various times heroic men have made themselves ridiculous in the eyes of their fellows in an effort to impress on them the advantages of dress reform; but. their noble sacrifices have been abortive, largely because the extremists have forgotten that in the matter of dress men are crusted tories. Even the most enthusiastic Communist refuses to discard his heavy, dusty threepiece suit in favour of a light, loose, comfortable costume in scarlet silk, and the brightest of the male Y.T.’s will not go into velvet shorts and v-necked, sleeveless tunics of crepe-de-chine unless he is extremely well lit. Women devote so much time and money to dress that it W’ould be astonishing if they had not achieved something. Undoubtedly living is made more expensive for them by the protean fashions, but if Ihe persistency with which the impossible of today becomes the socially possible of to morrow is set aside as a feminine idiosyncrasy, there remains the fact that she has thrown off a lot of useless clothing and is cooler, healthier and freer as a result. She has triumphed over modesty and shown that she has nothing to fear from the shocked scrutiny of men. It may not be possible to see through men’s clothes, but their opacity is a reflection of that obstinate male modesty and conceit which prevents him from following in the wake of his sisters and his cousins and his aunts, to say nothing of his mother, in letting light and air to his skin. Scientific gentlemen inform us that women have a thicker sub-cutaneouc layer of tallow and this affords them better protection against the cold, but before the male reaches the stage in dress where the extent to which cold can get under his skin matters, he will have discarded much of the heavyweight clothing which now encases him in a dust-laden, cumbersome armour. On sultry days when women look supremely cool, he is suffering the agonies of the damned, holding a greasy face over a stiff white collar and trying valorously to breath behind a waistcoat loaded with the details of male equipment. The only relief he can obtain is to remove his stuffed coat and work in his shirtsleeves; but his conservatism compels him to restore this heavy, flapping cover as soon as anyone other than his intimate friends and relatives approaches. He burdens himself with ties which will not slip, studs which roll under dressing-tables, pockets which insist on collecting lumber and grime. When a woman wears her fur coat on a warm day he smiles, forgetting that while she can remove it and be cool, he is kept all day in a Turkish bath. He carries about in clothes as many lbs as she does ozs, and he knows not comfort. That is because he is a ctothes-bound conservative. lam an offender,• but I have an excuse. I cannot imagine my rotundity in mauve pongee and I don’t think a basque would suit my contours, which are, not suited to emphasis. There are, however, many citizens whom I would hand over to a dressmaker. —CRITICUS.