LADIES PREFER—?

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 365, 5 March 1932, Page 20 (Supplement)

LADIES PREFER—?

The Changing Cycle of Romance. TYPES OP LOVERS. (By LADY DRUMMOj\D-HAT.) Ladies preTer—? 1 don’t believe that we have ever been asked. Someone ought to write a “Gentleman's Breviary” to dispel such masculine illusions as “a man’s a man for a’ that,” or “all the nice girls love a sailor.” History may have revealed us as traditionally indifferent to the colour schemes of our lovers, favouring dark with fair, even white locks, and especially the iron-grey haired hero of strong, silent drama. But what few seem to realise is that ladies prefer the lover a la mode, and that fashions in love depend on a jjurely feminine dictatorship, to offset, no doubt, the arbitrary dominion of male fashion tyrants in Bond Street and the Rue de la Faix.

Artists, poets, satirists, have glorified, sung or ridiculed period types of beauty down the ages, in futile effort or conviction that they were discovering or im-

mortalising the modern woman of their epoch, whereas it is the same Eve all the time. It is easier for a brunette to indulge in thirty shillings’ worth of blonde than for the average citizen to aureole himself with the glamour of a Lindbergh or the sex-appeal of a Rudolph Valentino. Fortunate is the, prototype of the idol of to-day’s romance. What is there left for the de mode matinee idol, the movie-cowboy, or cave-man sheik to do, except wait for the swing of the pendulum back to popularity ? Out-of-date Heroes. Memory’s kaleidoscope of out-of-date heroes is as uncomfortable and depressing as turning out the consents of an attic. Pre-war dresses and picture postcards of Lewis Waller, for instance. They date. It is consoling, however, to reflect that mankind is incurably romantic. That we are, civilisation bleaching the colour from colour and tradition, stealing the crimsons and purples, golds and royal blues from the tapestry of our times, dyes itself in turn in the scarlet and silver of gangland thrill, the azure of aviation romance, the steel-greys, pale greens and onyx-blacks of engineering wonderland, embroidering tlic sombre tissue with lightning threads of controlled electricity. If not to replace the pageantry of chivalry, romance of monarchies and courts, glamour of the old East, harems and hourijs, what else docs the trend ol vicarious cinema thrill —lurid, colourful, passionate, primitive—signify? Representative heroes used to be the product of an epoch, the gladiators of ancient Rome, knights of chivalry, cavaliers of the Civil War, gallants of the eighteenth century. Now they are the vintage of a decade. It is all because ladies prefer to vary, their fashions in swifter succession. Fashions in dress, fashion in lovers. Fashions in Lovers. Love itself has by no means been always “much the same.” Our present conception of tile term being, indeed, a development of only comparatively recent centuries. Individual love was an unknown quantity to primitive man, who “aspired to be no more than the flower which scatters its seed to the wind.” Children knew no fathers. The result was a matriarchy, or state of society in which woman was in practice as well as in theory the head of the family. Realising that he was entirely at the mercy of what ladies preferred, ancient man tried to undermine this supreme feminine authority through the various secret societies. Transition from the matriarchy to male supremacy was due in greater part to .man's physical advantage as yearround hunter and provider. Woman herself weakened her own position, and strengthened his, with increasingly exigeant demands for comfort and “luxury,” only obtainable as spoils of the chase, by violence, or ingenuity of dawning creativeness. Greek Marriage Ideas. The formality of marriage came much later, and was at first only regarded as a duty to the State. In several of the old Greek States it had to be made compulsory. No doubt to check a tendency to smugness amongst this new category of women known as “ wives,” contemporary writers pointed out that the wife *’ had no other task than to produce legitimate offspring, and yet she gave hereelf airs and graces,” as being better than other women. The influence of Christianity eventually completely revolutionised the status of women. Initiated into new ideals, animated by new ideas, admitted to a spiritual equality, women took a decisive hand in moulding a new standard of masculinity. A few generations served to produce examples of the very perfect gentle knight, and, as ladies found this innovation piquant, to say the least, the age of chivalry blossomed in all its idealism and artificiality. Woman was now at once a divine being, so spiritual that she could not even be thought of in connection with a body, and at the same time a devil’s toll sent down by Satan to tempt man. On the one hand, we find the ideal of the troubadour, crystallised m the “ Leys d’Amors,” to the effect that the troubadour who even thought of a kiss committed an act of indecency, unfitting linn for ever for the society of true troubadours. Bernard de Venladour said, “ I ask no more of my mistress than that she should suffer me to serve.” On the other hand, records of the old “ Courts of Love,” where ladies and their troubadours met to discuss love, and decide test cases, reveal that ladies still occasionally prefer more personal demonstrations of devotion than mere serenading. Code of Love. The code of the thirty-one Laws of Love is instructive. Random points include “Marriage cannot be pleaded as any excuse for refusing love.” “ Jt is not becoming to love those ladies who only love with a view to marriage.” “ A new love affair banishes the old one completely.” “ Nothing shall prevent one lao.y being loved by two gentlemen, or ono gentleman by two ladies.” A test question at one of the “ Courts of Love ’ “ Which is the greater, the love between lovers or between husband and wile?” was dismissed as inadmissible by the \ iscountess Ermengarde of Narbonne, who pointed out that there was not any love, in the real sense, between husbands and wives. Conceived in idealism, the theories of chivalrv rose to the heights of artificiality, and finally slumped to the ridiculous. Jaufre Rudel fell m love by hearsay with a ladv in far off Tripoli, and spent half his life writing about lier. Peire Vidal’s lady love was named Lowe, which means “wolf,” so, to prove his devotion, lie liad himself sewn up in some wolf skins to serenade her. Ameril de Peguilhan wrote, “ He who loves with all liis heart would fain be sick with love, such raptures arc his pain.” As long as ladies preferred troubadours, troubadours there were in plenty. But once their popularity was on the

wane, tliose unable to conform to the coming fashion were hard put to find patronesses. Fall of Idealism. The decline and fall of the troubadour glory is eloquent between the lines of a medieval manuscript in the Bodleian Library. “1 can play,” writes the aspirant, “the lute, syrinx, and twelve other instruments. Can sing well make tales and fables, make love verses to please young ladies, and play the gallant if required. Then I can throw the knives into the air and catch them, fan balance chairs, and walk on my head.” Count Rambaut was already in advance of the times when he confided that for his part he found the surest wav to

—“Baroque” Model, Loudon. Wa female favour was to break her nose by a blow of the fist.” It was not until the passing of medievalism that we even began to cuter upon love in its modern meaning. “Marriage,” said Hugo of St. Victor, “is the friendship between man and woman.” This is the keynote of the whole transition stage. Gradually the friendship grew and ripened, the old idea of the ancients that love was all body and no soul, and the medieval stage that it was all soul and no body disappeared. The love that we know to-day came gradually into its own. From this time on, women have enjoyed an ever-increasing influence in popularising masculine types. At the courts of the Tudors, Stuarts, and Louis XIV, le Roi Soliel, the attire, manner, or accomplishments of some particularly successful gallant would be carefully noted and copied by aspirants to ladies’ favours and apprentices to the gay life. HEALTHY HAIR. CHANGED MODES. “Mary, Mary, quite contrary; how does your hairline grow?” Does it sweep back from the forehead in a smooth, unbroken line, or have you that rarity, a “widow’s peak”? Have you what is ungraciously eallcd a “cow-lick”? A “cow-lick,” you know, is the spot just over the temple where the hair recedes abruptly from the forehead. Aud, of course, a “widow’s peak” is the term applied to the hair that grows down in a point to the centre of the forehead. If you have either of these hairlines you may spend hours before your-mirror trying to arrange the hair so that it may bo concealed. However, the unusual coiffure has become so popular lately, that women who formerly tried to hide these marks of. distinction now comb the hair straight back from the forehead in order to show them. It may surprise you some time to find out just how your hair grows naturally. After many years of parting it on one side or the other, or even in the centre, the hair becomes trained to falling in its accustomed style. But its own arrangement may be much more becoming than the way you usually wear your hair. Some time, just after a shampoo, massage the scalp round the parting with the tips of your fingers. Then, while the hair is still wet, bend your head so that the hair falls forward and comb it while it is in that position. Next, toss the head back and let the hair fall as it will. You will be surprised to discover that you have a natural parting —which may or may not be the one you usually comb in. Any new arrangement is beneficial to the hair because it gives the locks that have been concealed or held close to the scalp a chance to get sunlight and fresh air. Now that long hair has become accepted once again, women have more opportunity to rearrange their hair than was Possible durintr tho bobbed era.