WHICH IS THE MODEST SEX ?

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 3484, 8 November 1913, Page 7

WHICH IS THE MODEST SEX ?

MOR E A BOLT UND R ESiSJ NO. Reverting to the "orgy of undressing.” the writer of Vanity Fair in the “Argonaut” complains that “there is a good deal too much cant about this business, a good deal too much assumption that the woman who dresses indecently does so because her naturally pure nature lias been misled by example, and that it is only necessary to tell the woman with the diaphanous dress that her dress is diaphanous to cause her to discard it at once. Nothing could be further from the fact. The diaphanous dress, the suggestive dress, is worn only by shameless women who are naturally wantons, and who take advantage of the spirit of the day to throw off all the restraints against which they have secretly fretted for so long. “Indeed, feminine modesty has boon vastly overrated all along the line. It has very few of the features of a real sentiment. It is to be classed with the protective coloration of some animals. It is a matter of expediency, a pose, a bait. The average man lias far more physical modesty than the average woman. There are some' things that no man will talk about, however degraded he may be, but there are no such reticences among women. And women know this to be true. Therefore to treat the indecently dressed woman as though she needed no more than a little kindly advice and a few paternal admonitions is a piece of unmitigated humbug. What she needs is to be spanked, and it may be said that she lias dressed herself for the occasion. “There was once a wife who said that her husband had learned to swear from the parrot. We are imitating that wife when we say that women have learned their immodisty from Paris. They did nothing of the kind. They learned it from the devil, who is willing and eager to teach all of us. No one pretends that the indecent dances were imported from Paris. On the contrary, they were exported to Paris. Every one knows that. And indecent dressing and indecent dancing are twin sisters. They come of a wanton contempt for modesty that takes advantage of a general letting down of bars to come to the surface.”