LUCKY MODERN GIRLS!

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12754, 25 September 1919, Page 9

LUCKY MODERN GIRLS!

In spite of the threatened shortage of men, how easy matters social are made for the girls of to-day J What wonderful opportunities the modern amusements open out—with what a slender armoury one needs to bo equipped for conquest! The eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries left us a great tradition of beauty and wit. If you hadn’t the oue you simply had to possess the other. In the less remote age of my own young days we had to work hard to get our effects, and to be clover in many ways. People thought a great deal of looks, and especially “ figure-” A pretty face oven wasn’t enough. The figure was held to be all-important; a flat chest was ridiculed mercilessly by caricaturists, while the large waist such as the happy modem girl rejoices in would then have spelt utter damnation. Heroines of popular novels always had their “ swelling bosoms,” their rounded waists, their exquisite curves, described in detail.

Nowadays, nobody need have a figure. Figures have gone “ out.” , Swelling curves are “off.” Waists don’t existThe ideal of .an identical appearance for back and front is easily achieved- For social success—except in the most exclusively intellectual circles you needn’t he “ high-browed ” or . well informed or accomplished or replete with parlour tricks—only “jolly,” “ sporting,” unaffected, and you are pronounced “topping,” and “simply It.” Dance partners, hitherto the prize only of the fair and the dazzling, are now to be had in plenty for hut the price of a little skill, while if you can play bridge well you will have friends galore. People will seek you out and ask you to meals and cultivate you all day and half the night. Given a modicum of either of these accomplishments, it is roses, roses all the way alike, for the silliest “ flapper” and the sourest’ spinster. Is this the final triumph of mind over matter? Is it the greatest known victory over the lure of the external? ' Anyhow, it must he very nice to he a girl in 1019 Daily Mail.”