“BAD GIRLS”

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20104, 24 March 1928, Page 14 (Supplement)

“BAD GIRLS”

AND BAD FORM. Writing in the Daily Mail recently a modern girl declared that there is a considerable cult of wickedness nowadays. You would hardly dare call a modern girl “good” to her face. It might very possibly bo true, but the poor thing would be dreadfully mortified. It is at least difficult to be very bad as io be fairly good for a girl with a normal upbringing. How uiany of these modern maidens strive after wickedness and only achieve bad style? It is pathetic to think what a large percentage of them are no worse inside than their demure female ancestors. That it is unshockable is one of the proudest boasts of modern ignorance. When someone says, as a preliminary to an anecdote, “I hope you are not easily chocked?” the addressee never contents herself with a mere “Not so very,” or “Well, suppose you 'risk it?” No, she laughs heartily and replies, “Why, I’m never shocked!” Girls start in this fashion at quite an early age. You may often hear a sweet, silly, innocent little debutante, got up in slavish imitation of a chorus girl, encouraging some quite nice young man to tell her some quite nice story. When she hears the story, cither she does not understand that there is anything wrong with it, or she is heartily ashamed of not quite liking it, or she considers proudly that she. is going up in the world, and after all it must be all right as she is a friend of Angela ’s. ■ In any case, she responds with a bright giggle. He, being too modern to know better, tells her another. There is a. sort of dismal humour about the sight of Nature’s Good Little Girls trying to be rakish. They are not. vicious, only silly.

As to the oldCx girls, they all bark with no small energy, but comparatively few of them have much bite. Their conversation is as naughty as perseverance can make it. They discuss gloriously subjects that were taboo to the last generation. Some are not without wit and contrive to be very amusing.

In general, however, the spectacle of a lot of God’s creatures sitting round a dinner table trying to think of remarks about bedrooms is something of an anaesthetic. Yet most of them arc probably very good sorts, even if the ladies arc painted like pierrots and have not sufficient imagination to think for themselves. Tell them, they are little devils and they will adore you. I do not of course, deny that there arc plenty of delightful creatures who still temper charm with discretion. I certainly do not deny that this age has its fair allowance of real vice, quite apart from the blatant; cases of newspaper notoriety. There are, without doubt, a sufficiency of young women who achieve this sought-for wickedness without the faintest effort. But I contest that it is not these so much as the great multitude of their crude and

comparatively innocuous disciples who catch the eye and excite so much unfavourable notice. The minority to whom badness is natural do it so much more gracefullly.

Immorality is not really the crying evil of society. Our curse to-day is more the lesser nuisance of vulgarity.