THE MODERN MISS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17343, 16 July 1924, Page 11

THE MODERN MISS.

AND MAN-CATCHING i VICTORIAN GIRL, GOOD WORD FOR TO-DAY’S \ SPECIMEN, * Many tilings are unpleasant, and one hateful. Among the unpleasant the |>ublic places income tax and influenza; [the position of hatefulness teems to be •left to the modern girl (writes the {famous novelist, W. T_,. George, in the f* Sunday Chronicle”). Only the other id ay Frances Balfour deplored that the girl should paint and clothe iberself as a. courtesan ; that she has. tthrough knowledge, lost respect for foe n and likewise lost interest in tho affairs of life and in the spiritual Cady Frances was delivering a fan! - attack, considering what is soften said and what might he said about the modern girl, hut to me it has fit. familiar sound. For instance, Moliere paused one of his characters to deplore the bad behaviour and the pedantic sminds of the women of the seventeenth century: and Juvenal looked upon his Tune in Rome 'as made horrible by unand unsatisfactory girls ... •eighteen hundred years ago 1 THE AMELIA SEDLEY IDEAL. The modern girl has always been un Satisfactory, and it is sad to think tha: £ifty vears from now our grandchildren will be told how virtuous, how elevated, were the girls of to-day. Evidently there is only one kind of good girl, jstnd that’s the old girl. This aggressive attitude to the modfern girl arises. 1 suspect, from what. 2 may call the Amelia Sedley ideal. My readers will remember Amelia in \ an--stv Fair.” She shares with Dora Cop•perfield the honour of being England’s most contemptible heroine. And yet {the Amelia Sedley girl, who blushed •when a man looked at her, wept when he spoke loud, generally answered, “Yes, Papa.” and left politics, moral sand religion to those “ who were older and wiser than she,” is still idealised. Just because she left everything to men, including the task of keeping he r* DEMURE COURTESAXS. ’But this does not mean that I look topon the modern girl as perfect. I love |her too well to make such a charge. I will even concede that if she painted, •powdered, lip-sticked, kholed, bobbed and shingled less she would lose none of her charms. Though it is true that jcold cream never spoilt » kiss, fc, natural product may be imf proved out of recognition. TV here a rheek is velvety or a lip carries dew, cosmetics are merely an irritation. Only, I must protest against the idea rjhat the modern girl tries to look like sn courtesan. She does nothing of the SiincL » * for the courtesan won't let Sher. i I ’ f Twenty years ago one could tell a courtesan by her cosmetics. When respectable women, who always slightly lemry the dashing air and the adventurous life of the courtesan, adoptel She* weapons the courtesan was teiufck to change. She became what *:he is to-day, mild and demure; so that yop may now tell an entirely respectable girl mainly through tlie thickness fit her decorations. I will concede only •thisC the modern girl may want to 7ook tike the courtesan, but she is airiray* a little late in attaining this obscure ideal. THE “BAD EXAMPLE.’ , Ai regards the modern girl’s lack of reverence for men, the subject is a jittle delicate for a man to treat. It hakes two to make reverence-- one to afeel and the other to inspire. We have educated women, and now they understand us. From a masculine point of this fs a serious argument again*! ♦the extension of feminine education. Lastly, it is Said that the modern gg-fri, with her capacity for drinking Vocktails and for smoking cigarettes. With the vividness of her epigram*, and ‘the equal vividness of her morals, has ceased to give us a good example. This anay bej but if the girl of the past occupied herself in giving a good example, a result of which thskre was no popular education, no regulation of child labour, a tendency on the part of men to pome up to the drawing room drunk, •then the modern girl might, as well give lip good *xampl© as a bad job.

“OLD EGG. M T agree that the modern girl exhibits £2- certain brevity which some may describe as rudeness. Her conversation inclines to telephones. She used to call her parent “ Old Egg,” and what she calls him to-day I don't know, but she •was not alone in her sin. One might {make an attack on the yoking man of to-day on exactly the same lines as the "young girl. On the other side of the modern girl’s account figure, it seems to me. some important, items. For instance, T believe her infinitely more capable of romance than the girl of an earlier age. This goes against prejudices, but l ■would point out that romance does not consist in drooping over a stile, or even in dying for the beloved. To live for the beloved, to help him in his work, to share his interests, to be his companion to stick to him in sickness and in health, etc—there is something more romantic about all that than the faints* of yesterday. Among the women of the past were numbered many of great < haracter or intellect, but the average quality was low. A man took a wife as housekeeper and instrument of pleasItre, but he seldom took a friend. CATCHING MEN. And the ancestress of the modern girl d:d not help men to do this, because, at '<&. rule, her mind was not clean. Here again I came up against prejudice when asserting that under the muslin bodices, under the beribboned baby bonnets, aran one preoccupation, and one oniy—catching a man. The Victorians could not see a man And a girl together without speculating on intentions. They could imagine between men and women only sox. Art 1 •they were right, for the grand average ®l the girls of the past have qualified tor membership of a rabbit hutch. And I should like to mention that the costume of 1820, cut low, armless, and arranged so as to outline figures beyond deception, was infinitely more salacious than the -costume of to-day. Likewise, we, need have no illusion as to the object of the bustles of 187f>, of the small waists and often padded t or sages of 1885. The modern girl, with her frankness and her easy discussion of any topic* seems flower-fresh by the side of her ancestress, who was nothing but a houri in black silk. MOTHER Ol*' THE FUTURE. I am all for the modern girl because she v* the modern girl, just as I an. for the railway as against the stage coach. The critics of the modern girl would be much annoyed if the}- had to travel to Manchester by coach; they can imagine improvement in transport; why are they unable to imagine improvement in our maidens? It is because they are sentimental, because they are thinking, not of the days when girls were sweet, but of the days when they themselves were sweet. They .idealise the girl of the past because they idealise their .own youth; and they dislike the modern girl because >he is damnably young and they are so damnably old. The mooern girl is the product of conditions; these, who do not

like the modern girl had better alter the conditions, and the girl will alter with them. Personally, I am willing that she should alter herself as she thinks fit. She is giving birth to the future, and I do not see why she should not be trusted to look after it as wej as her mother looked After the past.