A WORD TO MIDDLE-AGE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20150, 19 May 1928, Page 4 (Supplement)

A WORD TO MIDDLE-AGE

(By A Flapper). 1 think it is high time we “flappers” protested against, the ridiculous conception of the modern minx that is supposed to depict, our true temperamental contours in the pages of current Action and journalism. We should bore each other stiff and alienate each other for ever if we looked, thought, talked, or behaved, as do the impossible cock-tail imbibing creatures who haunt the imagination of the older generation. Girls are better pals to-day than they have ever been; and such comradeship as they now achieve would not countenance the sort of conduct indulged in by the modern minxes of bookstall novels. We may be plainer-spoken than our forbears? but wo have our own decencies and our own reserves. We shrink from the sort of wholesale emotional exposure that, is apparently natural to so many of our bitterest midd'le-aged critics, who put into our months the. sentiments that are instinctively their own. To deal with demonstrable facts instead of vague conjectures, wc arc af-l

forded abundant proof that any number of the real minxes of modern feminine evolution may be looked for in the ranks of the middle-aged. It is they who provide the Divorce Court Judges with endless themes for psychological homilies and .dubious humour. It is they who are perpetually throwing their bonnets over the windmill and deeming the world well lost for middle-aged “love.” Such “love” as waves its panache beneath the wigs of lefjil wags does not appeal to us. Wo should not dream of risking our little sunny place in the sort of world in which we And our healthy happiness—for “love” that comes so overwhelmingly into the mhddle-aged category. Life holds for us countless interests that save us from the fret and fever of sex introspection. Above all, It holds for us that jolly companionship of our own kind which we And quite as entertaining as the society of the sterner sex, and more enduring. We like our boy comrades very well; but wc do not sacrifice our girl chums on their wayside altars, even when petrol ignites the flame. Wc arc just as happy to drive our own two-seaters down the open roarl as to aidmirc a sunset in a stationary Rolls-Royce with a plus-foured Adonis at the wheel. And to play our own round of golf and make up our own foursome ou the ten-nis-court. Not to mention glorious knap-sack days in merry weather, and festive nights at the theatre when we pay for our own seats, and provide our own feminine laughter. Yes, and even buy each other a bunch of violets when good cheer is in the air. But novelists and scribes in general. of course, have no use for our

bright little self-container! existence. We .do not afford them sufficiently sensational “copy.” So they rig up a. phantom of their own hectic dreams and dub it “typical.” Why give themselves so much unnecessary labour when middle-age offers them genuine “copy” galore?