For women's rights and good design

It's International Women's Day.

So here's to women, internationally!

Source: Wikimedia Commons

The decline of the western hemline

Here's something I just unexpectedly ran across while looking through inter-war newspaper articles for references to Oswald Spengler: a recounting of a lecture at the Edinburgh City Business Club by Mr. R. H. Munro on the topic of fashion.

Mr Munro was dealing principally with the ever-changing fashions in women's wear. Married men profess to deplore these changes, but no man likes to see his wife fall behind in the parade. It is true that a woman who remains old-fashioned long enough may find herself again in the fashion, for as Beaumont and Fletcher observed in the Elizabethan age, "We know that what was worn some twenty years ago comes into grace again." In somewhat less that twenty years we have witnessed our womenfolk abandoning their crowning glory only to grow it again, and shortening their skirts only to lengthen them again. Yet history never repeats itself in exact detail. Women's infinite variety is never staled by custom, for custom never gets a chance.
"The Dictates of Fashion," The Scotsman, 8 May 1935, p. 12.

The Spengler reference (in case you're interested in these kinds of things) derives from his concept of "Dionysian Man", which Mr Munro uses as a description of a feature particular -- in his view -- to Western civilisation: the type of person "in a state of continual movement from one idea to another", who is "constantly on the quest for visions to guide him along untravelled roads".

Exercise, the weaker vessels and their 'monthly mortgage'

Here's something that I ran across today while working on another article related to police scandals in 1928.

It may be that our decision to go for an hour-long run this morning in the extreme cold we're experiencing encouraged my interest in this story.

Of course, it might be the London 2012 fever that I'm feeling as well.

Anyway...

Should a Woman Be an Athlete? 

Violent Exertion that Injures Brain and Body

DANGER TO BOTH SEXES

By Sir W. Arbuthnot Lane

Now that the Olympic Games are in full swing the question has arisen as to whether these physical contests are harmful to women. The question as to whether they are harmful to men, too, also arises—though it is apt to be overlooked.

Both questions can be answered in a definite manner.

That excessively violent exercise and maintained effort, such as is exhibited in athletic contests in general and the Olympic Games in particular, is most detrimental to human health is a well-recognised fact in medicine.

REMARKABLE EXPERIMENTS

But the general public, if they realise at all that over-exertion is damaging, certainly do not realise how remarkably injurious it can be.

For it is not inconceivable that a person who persistently overstrained his or her body over a certain period of time might eventually become not only a physical wreck, but also a mental defective.

Outside the circle of those with medical knowledge there are but few who have heard of the interesting experiments in this line conducted by that famous surgeon, Dr. George Crile, of Cleveland, Ohio.

These experiments have proved that excessive physical strain, like severe mental shock, results in a destruction of brain cells—the number of cells destroyed being in proportion to the violence of the exercise or shock.

Moreover, these cells once lost are not replaced. Dr. Crile experimented with all kinds of animals. He raced them into states of exhaustion and subsequently examined their brains. In each case he found that cells had been destroyed in enormous numbers.

WOMEN SUFFER MORE

... This [the destruction of brain cells] applies equally to men and women, but that women must suffer more is obvious when one considers her distinct physical disadvantages as compared with man. For much of her strength has to be sacrificed to meet her special requirements of reproduction for which she pays a monthly mortgage.

Apart from the fact that the fact that woman is ‘the weaker vessel,’ however, and consequently more easily exhausted than man, there is little reason why violent exercise should harm her any more than it does the stronger sex.

But it must not be forgotten that it does harm the stronger sex. ...

NERVOUS STRAIN

Exercise in moderation is beneficial even essential to the well-being of both sexes, but care must be taken not to overdo it. These international contests are, in the opinion of some medical men, pure folly when they are carried to such a pitch of exhaustion as would appear to be not infrequently the case.

Not only do they impose physical strain, but also mental strain, for nervousness is present in practically every competitor prior to a race and is so great in some cases that some, if they fail to obtain the success they hoped for, break down and become hysterical.

One woman competitor was so affected in the Olympic Games the other day.

It is common knowledge, too, that athletes depreciate physically earlier in life than persons leading a normal existence. ...

MODERATION WANTED

Just as excessive physical strain destroys brain cells so will mental shock and persistent mental worry lead to their destruction.

It is a fact that illness, and even death, often follows mental worry because a number of brain cells have been lost and the person affected is consequently not in a fit state to combat disease.

Similarly ‘shell shock’ is due to the destruction of brain cells. ....

 
If a man or woman will observe moderation in all things—exercise, feeding, etc.—then he or she will be on the path to really good health.

But lack of an essential is as bad as an excess of it. Thus people should not starve themselves, or refrain from taking any exercise, but should take sufficient to meet the requirements of their various occupations and habits. Too little is as bad as too much.

Sunday News, 5 August 1928, p. 8.

Echoes from the past

While looking up something else recently, I ran across the excellent British Pathé film collection, more specifically a filmed edition of the BBC radio show, 'The Brains Trust'. The show started in 1941 and was based on the concept 'get a bunch of smart people together and make them spontaneously answer random questions from the public'.

This version, from 1945, was the first episode that was filmed. It's pretty fascinating.

Part 1:

THE B.B.C. BRAINS TRUST ANSWERING "ANY QUESTIONS?" Reel 1

For the rest of it: Part 2, Part 3.

There are a few rather slow moments in these videos, I'll admit (this is clearly an age before intellectuals learned to play to the camera, but I find this makes them all the more charming).

As a general comment, I think that most of the participants come across rather well, except for C.E.M. Joad, who seems a bit of a reactionary loudmouth. (His answer to the question about 'what makes a happy marriage' in part one might be partly explained by his own experiences in this area.) Both Jennie Lee (a key figure in the foundation of one of my present employers, the Open University, among other achievements) and Julian Huxley do, at least in my view, especially well.

Other interesting things I then ran across while hanging around the Pathé site were:

1. A fascinating documentary about women's emancipation in Britain, probably from the early 1970s (judging by the reference at the end to Arthur Marwick -- also of the Open University -- as academic consultant). It's terribly old-fashioned in terms of its voice-over (not that this is a bad thing...); however, the images are fascinating.

EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN

Part 2.

2. A 1961 documentary entitled 'Beat School' about Burgess Hill school, at which students were allowed to do...well, essentially what they wanted to. Including -- gasp -- smoking and listening to records. Smoking, after all, 'calms the nerves'.

BEAT SCHOOL

Enjoy!

And we have no idea where

This video of Iman al-Obeidi being silenced and taken away by Gaddafi's thugs is one of the most harrowing things I've seen in a while.



I, for one, want to know what happened to this woman.

Vorwärts, und nicht vergessen

Women at shooting practice, England in the 1930s (Via)

In honour of the 100th International Women's Day, the Guardian has created a list of the top 100 'inspiring' women.

Some of the choices make me applaud, others less so; but keeping with the theme of brotherly solidarity with the sisterhood, I won't go into that.

Anyway I just wanted to say how fortunate I am to have one inspiring woman in my own household.

And there was something I recently ran across that I thought might be appropriate.

CHAMPIONS ALL

'Champions All', Pathé newsreel film, 1920s.

Is there a Muslim sisterhood, too?

In The Guardian today, popular Lacanian Slavoj Z. contemplates on the "miracle of Tahrir Square." To explain the revolutionary rupture that in his view accompanies the collapse of Mubarak's regime, he makes a troubling comparison:

In Shah of Shahs, a classic account of the Khomeini revolution, Ryszard Kapuscincki located the precise moment of this rupture: at a Tehran crossroads, a single demonstrator refused to budge when a policeman shouted at him to move, and the embarrassed policeman withdrew; within hours, all Tehran knew about this incident, and although street fights went on for weeks, everyone somehow knew the game was over.

I, too have been thinking a lot about "the Khomeini revolution" these past weeks, though I guess in a somewhat more defeatist way. Slavoj ends his piece by warning against the dangers of realpolitik, apparently choosing to forget how often in human history revolutionary enthusiasm has ended in slaughter. I kind of like realpolitik, especially if it is of the calm, pluralistic way of enlightened democracies. I'm an old-fashioned girl, as you know.

How long, I wonder, until the veil will become mandatory for Egyptian women, how long until women who refuse to obey it will be stuck in a bag and machine-gunned?

Monotony, lassitude and the brutal exposure of skin

Something I just ran across while looking through my files for something else:

Chorus Girls' Clothes

The Monotony of Nudity

From our own correspondent.

Paris, Wednesday

Too many undressed chorus girls, Paris has decided, are monotonous.

In a new revue to open this week in one of the largest and most popular Montmartre music-halls well known to British visitors to Paris and noted hitherto for its 'daring' productions, the female form which has offended by becoming too familiar will, it is announced, be veiled from top to toe in muslin drapery and filmy lace.

This reform, according to M. Antoine, a Paris theatrical critic, was inevitable. 'Nudity on the stage', he writes, 'was leading to lassitude and boredom among spectators from its very dreary monotony.' Long clinging costumes, he contends, are more artistic than the brutal exposure of skin. Paris is watching the experiment with deep interest.

Daily News and Westminster Gazette, Thursday, 20 September 1928, p. 9.

It seems though, sadly, that I don't have any articles detailing the result of this particular 'experiment'.

(The 'historical bycatch' series; explanation.)

Scenes from 'the war against legs', 1928.

Given the heatwave that seems to have struck parts of western Europe recently, it's entirely appropriate that I ran across the following article today, which I originally discovered while researching a debate about police powers in the late 1920s.

Critics Shocked by Scanty Dress of Bathing Girls

Protests from Seaside and River: New Job for the Police

Special to “Reynolds’s”

Women’s dress—or, rather, the lack of it—is again a subject of excited discussion.

“Leg-mania” has arrived with the heat wave. One cannot be quite sure all the time, whether it is the effect of the heat on those who show their legs, or on those who criticise them.

Here is the latest list of places whence rise woeful protests at the display of the “female form divine.”

London
Southend
Paris
Arizona (where the wild men are)

In each centre the war against legs is being carried on with different tactics. In Arizona, for instance, where they don’t trust these matters to Watch Committees, the youths of the town declare that it is a “fight to the finish.” But in Southend the police have been ordered to keep a watch on girl bathers.

Did somebody say that the policeman’s lot was not a happy one?

This problem of legs has been in the public eye for a long time—since skirts showed a tendency to end soon after they began—but its present acute form began a few days ago, when a Thames Conservancy official ordered a boating party to put on more clothing.

A high official then stated: “We are not censorious of proper university costumes, but there are people who like to be a little daring and go to the extreme.”

Some of those people have been boating around Hampton Wick evidently, for this is what happened when the Joint Committee of the Port of London Authority met.

SCENES ON THE RIVER

Mr. G. Hammerton drew attention to what he called the “indecent clothing” worn by men and women on the river during the weekend.

“It was simply disgraceful, especially at Kingston Regatta, where parties were in the scantiest of bathing costumes making a disgraceful exhibition of themselves,” he declared.

Mr. W. Sanger attacked the modern two-piece bathing costume, and Mr. H. Hewitt, the Conservator, agreed that the scenes were very bad, particularly on Sunday.

Mr. Hammerton asked if the Thames Conservancy had any jurisdiction in the mater or was it one for the police.

The chairman, Mr. T. Ryan, said that no harm had been done by raising the matter, but he thought it sufficient if the Conservator informed the Conservancy that the matter had been discussed by that committee.

A KNIGHT, NOT IN ARMOUR

Mr. Sanger said that the members sitting round the table were all over a certain age, and therefore did not appreciate the mode of attire worn by those who frequented the river, especially in the hot weather. He wanted to know who the people were who complained about the dress.

Then up spake Mr. R. H. Berry. Like a chivalrous knight of old, he sprang to the defence of the fair ones in distress.

“I admire a well-shaped figure in a bathing costume,” he said.

Mr. Berry added that he was on the river during the week-end, and he saw a man, his wife, and children all in bathing costumes, and it was a very pretty sight.
Many will say, “Bravo, Mr. Berry!”

UNDRESSING ON THE BEACH

And now the scene moves to Southend. The following message was received from “Reynolds’s” correspondent last night—

The way in which girl bathers undress and dress themselves on the cliffs and on the beach at Southend-on-Sea, many of them without any attempt at secrecy, has offended the susceptibilities of some members of the Town Council.

Alderman Martin urged that steps ought to be taken without delay to put an end to the practice.

It is no uncommon thing, whilst walking along the beach by the pier, to encounter girls and young women donning or removing their bathing costumes with no tent or bathing wrap to conceal them from the public view.

Similarly, on the cliffs between the pier and Westcliff, they can be seen at week-ends divesting themselves of their ordinary attire on the grassy slopes and preparing themselves for the sea below.

In some cases, cars parked on the sea front serve the purpose of bathing huts.

The trouble is especially bad at weekends, when large numbers of trippers come down from London.

The police have been ordered to keep a watch for especially bad cases.

That the leg problem is as disturbing in America as it is here is revealed by the news that the men in the University of Arizona have decided to “shame” their girl colleagues into wearing more clothes. This is how a New York paper prints this exciting bit of news:

“Tuscon (Ariz.).—‘Steady there, young feller, jes’ keep your shirt on.’
The classic cry of the country constable echoes now on the University of Arizona campus. First, the girls took off their stockings and the lordly males took off their shirts in protest.

’Sfact! The sun-tanned, clear-eyed beauties of these windswept spaces recently took up the latest collegiate fad. Merrily pulling off their stockings, they came to class with bare brown limbs flying in the morning breeze.

The strong, silent men of the sun-baked plains regarded them with steady, level gaze and then muttered some collegiate equivalent of ‘That’s plum disgraceful, pardner.’

Wherefore, reprisals were started. When as and whenever a brown and fetching calf went flitting across the campus that soon were manly limbs exposed for all to see.

From assembly hall to dormitory went the call, ‘To arms!—and ribs and chests and backs—for modesty and for shame.’"

So that’s that. And now for Paris.

BISHOP’S DRESS BAN

A late Reuter telegram from the French capital says that a strong pronouncement against modern fashions has been made by the Bishop of St. Brieuc (Brittany), who protests against what he describes as the growing immodesty of women and girls, and even children.

The Bishop forbids any woman with bare arms, legs, or shoulders, or with too short a skirt, and even boys with shirts open too low at the neck, to enter any church or presbytery in his diocese.

Perhaps, after all, it is time this heat wave ended.

Reynolds's Illustrated News, 22 July 1928, p. 18.

Keep cool, people.

(The historical bycatch series.)

Frauenpower

While taking a short mental break from research in the British Library, I ran across a couple of interesting articles at the New York Times.

One is on changes in family life and motherhood in Germany as more women enter the labour market.

This is hardly a new topic, of course, but there are elements in the article that touch upon what I've found to be a distinctive mixture of modernity and traditionalism in my adopted homeland.

Much of it focuses on Bavaria, where these tendencies are, in my experience, more marked than usual.

As is kind of summed up in this passage:

Even five years ago, all-day schooling in Neuötting seemed unthinkable, Mayor Peter Haugeneder said. There is a crucifix in his office, in every classroom of the Max Fellermeier school and even in the Spanish-themed restaurant run by the gay butcher.

Also related in some way is an article on the increasing tendency for men to marry women who earn more and are better educated than they are.

There are, apparently, men who have a problem with this, causing some frustration in the world of dating.

Ms. Zielinski, the fashion stylist, said her best friend, a man, told her once: “ ‘You are confident, have good credit, own your own business, travel around the world and are self-sufficient. What man is going to want you?’ He laughed, but I found that pretty depressing.”

If true, it is.

“The pleasure of the many cannot be made subservient to the prudery of the few”: or, “Wear as little as you can.”

Part of a series: a few things I ran across in Colindale yesterday.

Ban on Bare Legs?

Dancer Shocks Patrons of Royal Opera House

SHEIK-SLAVE SCENE

“Perfectly Proper,” Says Producer

The appearance of a bare-legged dancer in a song-scena at the Covent Garden Opera House, London, has so shocked the patrons of the Royal Opera House dances that the directors have decided that her costume must be “instantly modified,” or the production in which she appears will be banned.

In “While the Sahara Sleeps” there is a scene between the sheik and his Arabian dancing girl, who appears dressed in silver tinsel and with bare legs.

The protest against her dress was conveyed to the producers in a letter from Captain J. Russel Pickering, on behalf of the directors.

“We think the costume of the slave is distinctly indecorous,” says the letter, “and severe criticism has been levelled at us by our patrons. Bare legs on the ballroom floor do not, in our opinion, accord with the tradition of the Royal Opera House, and we must insist, unless the costume is instantly modified, on the banning of the scene altogether.”

“Frankly we are bewildered at the ultimatum,” said Mr. Lawrence Wright, the producer of the scena, to a Daily Herald representative yesterday. “The scena contains nothing that would not be considered perfectly proper at any vicarage tea party, and, besides, bare legs are the vogue at all the smartest fancy dress balls nowadays.”

Mr. Wright added that he was prepared to submit the matter to the theatre licensing authorities, and abide by their decision.

Daily Herald, 30 October 1926, p. 3

The story continued, and you'll be pleased to know it had a happy ending.

BAN ON BARE LEGS ENDS

Objection that Came from Killjoys

The banning by the Covent Garden Opera House authorities of the bare leg slave girl costume in the song scena, “While the Sahara Sleeps,” has been lifted, and the scena will again be produced in the ballroom of the opera house this evening. It had been taken off in consequence of the ban.

Capt. J. Russell Pickering, general manager of the lessees of Covent Garden Opera House, confessed to the Daily Herald last night that he acted hastily in setting up the ban.

“The real objection to the costume,” he said, “I found came from killjoy sources with which it would not be desirable to be associated.”

“After all, in these days, the pleasure of the many cannot be made subservient to the prudery of the few, and the sheik scene in Mr. Laurence Wright’s scena is not obscene.”

It is understood that had the ban not been lifted, it was intended to produce the scena elsewhere.

Daily Herald, 5 November 1926, p. 9

And this, though not inspired directly by indecorous operatic dancing, seems not entirely unrelated. (There was something of a mania for swimming the Channel in that era, hence the reference in the first line.)

WHY WOMEN ARE HARDIER

Short Skirts the Secret of Channel Swims

ADVICE TO MEN

Discard Collars and Wear Knickerbockers

“That women have been so successful in swimming the Channel is partly due to the fact that they have trained themselves to stand the cold better than men.”

This was the dictum of Professor Leonard Hill in a lecture on dress to an audience of women at the Institute of Hygiene, London, yesterday. He said a useful little lot of advice was, “Wear as little as you can.”

“I have no objection,” he added “to the low necks and bare or silk stockinged legs which women have gone in for, so long as they are reasonable.”

“Pneumonia blouses are all nonsense. No girl has ever caught pneumonia through wearing a low blouse. It hardens her and helps her to resist such diseases.”

“Silk stockings and short skirts are good things, especially artificial silk stockings, which allow ultra-violet rays to penetrate to the skin. Artificial silk is better than natural silk, because you can get sunburnt through it.”

“CODDLED MEN”

“Men were more coddled than women. It would be a great advantage if men got rid of their collars and took to open necks. Things were drifting that way. If men would go about in knickerbockers or running shorts it would be to their good.”

“With modern methods of education and constant exposure women seemed to be becoming the hardier sex. They were already coddling boys, and one day we might all be ruled by women.”

Daily Herald, 18 November 1926, p. 1.

Doctor Prof. Hill's call for men to adopt the collarless knickerbocker look fell, as far as I know, on deaf ears.

Which is, all in all, probably a good thing.

'In defending her liberties, she neglects the graces a little'

Another dispatch from the (rather relentless) debate about the 'modern woman' in the 1920s.

SHY MEN--NOISY GIRLS

Noted Author Satisfied With Modern Youth

She or He?

Sir Galahads with Gentle Voices

'The young men of to-day, being gentle and gracious, make up for the boisterousness of the girls.'

Sir Edmund Gosse, the distinguished author, who celebrated his 78th birthday yesterday, made this comment in reviewing his ideas on modern youth in an interview last night.

'The woman of 21 is, of course,' he said, 'much more emancipated and manages things for herself. She has a very great advantage over the girls of my youth, but I think there is danger sometimes that, in defending her liberties, she neglects the graces a little.'

'I think, however, that the women of to-day are a great advance on what their grandmothers were. I wish, however, they were not quite so boisterous.'

'I find it a little difficult to distinguish who are the men and who the women--the only distinction seems to be the somewhat abbreviated skirt. The young man of to-day is much better behaved than when I was young.'

'There is an absence of anything like brutality. That is why I find it so difficult to know where the authors of the mediocre type of novel of to-day find their types.'

'There is, for instance, the strong young man who breaks up the furniture. I do not think he exists at all. Such ideas are mere conventionality, and show a complete want of observation.'

A rather different view of 'modern youth' was offered on the same page, immediately following:

GIRLS WHO OUGHT TO BE SMACKED!

Views of Miss 1927 by Mrs. 1821

'Girls who go about with skirts up to their knees, with hair cut like a man's, and a cigarette dangling from their lips, ought to be smacked and put to bed.'

This was the opinion expressed in an interview yesterday by Mrs. Sarah Collins, aged 106, of Shillington-street, Battersea, who claims to be the oldest woman in England.

Next to her dislike of modern girls and their ways, Mrs. Collins said she detested present methods of travelling.

As to doctors, she exclaimed: 'Doctors are no use to me. If people worked hard and went to bed at the proper time there would be no need for doctors. They always fuss about so much!'

(Both articles: Daily Herald 22 September 1927, p. 1.)

'Woman must hold her venturesome desires severely in check if she is to fulfil her natural functions.'

As a contribution to the (recently neglected) historical bycatch series, some enlightented commentaries on women that I found over the last couple of days in the pages of the ever-thoughtful Sunday Express.

MODERN GIRLS TOO MANNISH

FOOTBALL DENOUNCED AS A CHARM KILLER

Bath, Saturday.

Mr. A. W. Cuninghame, headmaster of Victoria College, Bath, in distributing the sports prizes at Duke-street High School, Bath, said in some girls’ schools the importance of athletics was exaggerated, and girls thought of nothing but sport.

‘The modern girl to-day is trying to do too much,’ he added. ‘Football, for instance, is not suited to girls. Their charm, balance and poise would all be lost and their dignity lowered by it.’

‘Girls,’ Mr. Cuninghame added, ‘are losing their former appreciation of chivalry. If a man to-day offered a woman his seat in a tram he would probably be told that she preferred to stand. That attitude does not respect courtesy and chivalry. I appeal to girls not to become mannish through too much athletics.’

Sunday Express, 1 October 1922, p. 7.

Why Women Love Getting “The Creeps”
By C. F. Burghes

A darkened stage. A sofa in the solitary bright spot near the footlights. On the sofa a pair of unsuspecting lovers. A door behind them opening slowly. A claw-like hand with ghostly, emaciated fingers feeling its way around the door-panel. In blissful ignorance of the horror about to befall them, they continue their affectionate prattle.

A woman’s voice from the pit, in a sibilant whisper: ‘I can’t bear it! Oh! I can’t bear it!’

This is an incident from ‘The Cat and the Canary,’ the latest dramatic thriller produced on the London stage.

Women, from the gallery to the stalls, clenched their hands while the shivers of apprehension ran down their backs as horror upon horror was piled up before their eyes. They laughed hysterically at every semi-comical moment, glad of the relief afforded their tortured nerves, and at the end applauded ecstatically.

No need to ask whether women like getting ‘the creeps.’ They revel in it.

ONE CROWDED HOUR

Women love being thrilled, as men do, because they also possess a very strong streak of primitive curiosity and craving for adventure.

Man’s curiosity has a thousand appeasing outlets. He can expend it on exploration, on scientific discovery, on unlimited daring quests of mind and body. Woman must hold her venturesome desires severely in check if she is to fulfil her natural functions. But they will not be denied. They fasten on the unseen and the intangible. They revel in ghost stories, in superstitions of all kinds, in spiritualism, in a riot of thrills, the madder the merrier.

Every woman would prefer to live for an hour in danger than to vegetate for a lifetime in security.

The woman who, in an agony of pleasure, exclaimed at the play, ‘I can’t bear it!’ not only did, but enjoyed herself thoroughly during every moment of the dreadful experience.

When her primitive curiosity longs in vain for an object on which to expend itself, when she is bored and discontented, when she is nervy and nothing can appease her irritability, take your wife to the creepiest play or give her the most hair-raising book you can find.

Horror is a tonic too seldom prescribed for horror-loving woman.

Sunday Express, 3 November 1922, p. 6

‘Sex Stuff’ and the Cinema

No matter who pays the piper in film entertainment, it is Woman who calls the tune, and Woman is slowly but certainly bringing the business of film entertainment to a dead end, from which, at the moment, there seems to be no means of escape.

The difficulty can be quite simply stated. Since women form not less than 70 per cent of the five million people who daily attend this country’s 4,000 place of film exhibition, it follows that the film producer who wishes to be commercially successful must cater almost exclusively for women.

The plain fact to be faced is that what pleases the women is strong sex drama, highly spiced and seasoned, of the type that throws into the melting-pot of social controversy the ramshackle and shot-riddled institution called matrimony.

ETERNAL FEMININE

The titles of current and prospective films give a clear indication of what is going on. Among them I note: ‘What’s Wrong with Women?’ ‘What Women Love,’ ‘When a Woman Strikes,’ ‘Woman against Woman,’ ‘The Woman of Lies,’ ‘A Woman of Pleasure,’ ‘A Woman’s Man,’ ‘Women Men Forget,’ ‘Women Men Love,’ ‘The Wrong Woman,’ ‘Woman Who Walked Alone,’ and ‘Hail the Woman.’ The list, if extended to including such words as ‘Passion,’ ‘Marriage,’ ‘Divorce,’ ‘Wife,’ and ‘Husband,’ would fill a column.

It is not so much my business to comment on this striking social phenomenon as to call attention to its consequences. There are no fewer than 10,000 notable films, long and short, which cannot circulate to a commercially profitable extent because cinema programmes are freighted with this dreadful load of ‘sex stuff.’ ....

Sunday Express, 14 December 1922, p. 6.

Showing some skin

Attending that media history conference I mentioned last week reminded me of a couple of things I've found in the newspaper archives which I've been meaning to post.

Of course, now I can't find them.

But I did run across a few other things, and -- not least since I'm feeling too harried by work-related writing obligations to spend much time commenting on the world -- I thought I'd put them up as part of my series on unexpectedly found history.

Today's instalment comes in a pair.

First, some intriguing -- and, by uptight British standards, quite sane -- commentary about the human body.

NECESSARY EVIL OF CLOTHES

Doctor on Short Skirts and Open Necks

"Not Immoral"

The modern woman, with her short skirts and sleeveless dresses, has a staunch upholder in Dr. William G. Savage, County Medical Officer of Health for Somerset.

In the course of an article on clothing, one of a weekly series issued by the Central Council for Health of the Society of Medical Officers of Health, Dr. Savage expresses surprise that "short skirts, which do not pick up the sweepings of the streets," and "the open neck and the sleeveless arms, which do give an opportunity for the ultra-violet rays of the sun to be absorbed," should be described as "immoral."

He thinks they are essentially healthy. "There is no doubt," he declares, "that woman has recognised that clothing is a necessary evil, and is doing her best to have as little of that evil as possible."

WARNING NOTE

The doctor is a firm believer in the value of cold baths in summer and gradual exposure, "to harden other parts of our skins so that when winter comes we need less clothing."

He adds, however, a warning note that hardening should be done judiciously, otherwise, "those who do it unwisely may pay the price and not be here to explain their unwisdom."

Conservative man, "muffled up in his tight collars and his heavy clothes, is far less hygienically clad." But Dr. Savage concedes him one point of superiority in that he does not wear the pointed, high-heeled boots and shoes favoured by many women.

In general, Dr. Savage's prescription is that "clothing must be sufficient to prevent cold, but not so abundant that it discourages the taking of exercise."

(The Daily Herald, 26 June 1929, p. 5.)

Same paper, next day:

GIRL WITH NO DRESS

Surprise on Arrest of Draper's Model

STRANGE CASE

A girl of 21 employed as a model at a wholesale draper's house was found to be without dress under her coat when arrested for shoplifting in the West End.

Gwen Smith, as she is named, admitted her offence when charged at Marlborough-street Police Court yesterday, and Mr. Mead remanded her.

The girl's father, a linen buyer, residing at Westcliff, explained that his daughter's duties necessitated her being without a dress, but he confessed that he could not understand whey she was out without one.

Mr. Mead asked if the girl had had any religious training?

The girl's father said he was a lay speaker in the Methodist Church, but his daughter was over age, and he could not force her.

POSITION OF FATHER

"Everyone who is a father sympathises with you," said Mr. Mead, "but it places me in a very embarrassing position. Is this sort of thing to go on?

"We get two or three cases every day. People who carry on legitimate businesses must be protected. The appalling and deplorable thing is that persons in high positions announce from the housetops that no young person must be punished for a first offence.

"It may be a very good thing, but it inadvisable that it should be proclaimed."

(The Daily Herald,27 June 1929, p. 4)

I am assuming that Mr. Mead was referring to the shoplifting part of the matter rather than the lack of a dress when he spoke of 'two or three cases every day'.

It is, though, possible that many people were simply taking Dr. Savage's good advice.

A short note from Jackobury Nation: Fighting patriarchy on all fronts

It's the end of a rather full couple weeks travel, conferencing and research in various bits of this fair isle and I'm not up for much serious thought on a hot and far-too-humid evening in London.

Which, as The Wife has noted, leaves me in a perfect state of mind to match the silly state of the media mind (i.e., wall-to-wall, 24-hour obsession with all things Jackobury) that has blossomed all around me.

And I suppose that while my brain seems to have temporarily shut down (encouraged, perhaps, by drinking too much red wine in the sun at a retirement party for my boss this afternoon) I'm still left ahead of Daily Mail columnist Liz Jones, who seems to suffer from this condition on a more permanent basis.

That's just a surmise based on the evidence of her commentary in today's Waily Snail entitled 'What's really oppressing women isn't the burka, it's their breasts'.

It's really quite...appalling.

But educational: I wasn't aware that Victoria Beckham was 'oppressed'. I'm appalled that some worthy charity has not intervened and helped the poor woman.

And then there's this useful tit-bit that our Liz offers:

Believe it or not, I once had very big breasts.

I did not know that. But without a reason to think otherwise, reader, I believe her. And I urge you to do likewise.

And the learning (and tragedy) doesn't stop there:

I’d been anorexic for years and when force-feeding and threats of hospitalisation hadn’t worked, in my early 20s my endocrinologist started feeding me drugs and hormones to make me eat and to make me fat. My breasts grew rapidly. Clothes no longer hung properly.

Fascinating.

Also:

My drug-induced breasts were nothing like the ones you see these days on the covers of men’s magazines: natural big breasts hang, honeydew melon-shaped, towards your waist.

Thanks Liz. Truly, this is information we can use.

It's especially gratifying -- I think we will all agree -- to see the Fail standing up for feminism and against the the objectification of celebrity women via their breasts.

Also via the Vomity Pail (which is distributed free by my hotel), I encountered 'Miss Ellie', who has been voted 'ugliest dog' at some kind of fair in California that concerns itself with such things.

The pure-bred, pint-sized pageant participant -- who has as far as I know not yet expressed any opinion about mammarial oppression -- has a strangely endearing charm, I must say. And she also called forth an immediate (though cross-species) association:

I always was more of a cat person.

Looking forward to being home.

Girls gone wild...

...or not, as the case may be.

Women Go Crazy at Sales

Magistrate’s Comment on Husband’s plea

‘It is the sales that seem to make the women go crazy,’ pleaded the husband of Lilian Philips, a Brixton woman, charged at West London Police Court yesterday with shoplifting at Barker’s store, Kensington.

‘I know she has done a very silly thing,’ added the man sorrowfully.

Mr. Mead: Silly? It isn’t silly. It is wicked to steal. Silly—that is the way people look at it. People seem to have lost the sense of standards nowadays. They talk of being in prison as if it is an accident; something they can’t help.

Mrs. Phillips was ordered to fourteen days’ imprisonment in the second division.

(Daily Herald, 4 July 1928, p. 1)

Meanwhile...

Slander on Southend

Unfounded Tales of Girl ’Drunks‘

The Truth

Happy Holiday With Few Police Cases

Southend is ‘up in the air’ about a report that ‘girl “drunks”’ among its visitors caused trouble on Bank Holiday. Indignation is expressed that this unfounded story should have been published in London evening papers yesterday, as well as broadcast all over the country by a news agency.

‘Two very quiet days for the ambulance men,’ was the way in which this Southend tale began. ‘Most of the cases were caused by broken bottles on the shore and the “drunks,” and several people dived head first into shallow pools with painful results, and were more or less injured.’

A SLANDER!

Then followed the allegation which is resented as a slander. ‘Though there were fewer men drunk,’ it ran, ‘there was an appreciable increase among young girls, and they caused considerable trouble.’

To a Daily Herald reporter the authorities at Southend dismissed this statement as absurd.

‘Nothing of the kind,’ said the Mayor, Mr. Arthur Bockett, when he was asked whether any drunken behaviour among girls had come to his notice.

‘The people who came to Southend on Bank Holiday were excellently behaved and we had no trouble at all.’

‘It was a very quiet holiday. There was no rowdyism of any sort.’

At the police station the story of trouble with intoxicated girls was also flatly denied. ‘We have not seen any,’ declared the police.

In fact, it appears that of all the thousands of men and women who visited Southend on Monday three only came under the notice of the police as having ‘taken a drop too much,’ and even these cases were not serious.

Indeed, no arrests were made, and there were no charges of drunkenness at the police court yesterday.

(Daily Herald, 8 August 1928, p. 1)

Rather an extensive article to conclude, essentially, that nothing happened.

Bloodthirsty females of the worst description

I'm feeling a bit blue at the moment (long story, not very interesting), but running across the following -- an article from an issue of The Scotsman, 1823 -- was somehow cheering.

So, I thought I'd share a little ultraviolence from old Edinburgh. Perhaps it'll brighten your day too.

Yesterday morning most alarming cries were heard by the watchman upon the South Bridge, proceeding from a house occupied by females of the worst description. Having procured assistance and forced his way in, he observed eight females, some of them in a state of nudity, engaged in a deadly affray, and the landlady stretched upon the floor, and weltering in her blood. One of these amazons, a woman of amazing strength, was armed with a smoothing-iron, with which she was dealing blows around her in every direction. The whole party were conveyed to the watch-house, and surgical aid was procured for the landlady, whose temporal artery was cut with the smoothing-iron, and had discharged about a choppin and a half of blood. The same day the whole of the combatants, with the exception of the landlady, were sent to operate upon the tread-mill for thirty days.

By the way, a 'chopin' (spelled 'choppin' in the article) is a now-obsolete Scottish unit of measurement, equal to .848 litres or, if you prefer, 2 mutchkins.

(More obsolete Scottish units of measurement here.)

The slow-motion pedestrians of the bargain-hunting sex

Seeing as we're in for another media panic about girls gone wild, the following dispatch from another era--which I just happened to run across while looking for something else here in the newspaper archive--may be of interest.

WOMEN OFFENDERS

From an overseas visitor comes a suggestion for dealing with the congestion of London’s footpaths. Having been impressed by the centralisation of trades that has taken place, our visitor considers that only certain classes of pedestrians should be allowed to frequent certain thoroughfares. So he advocates that the western side of Oxford-street should be reserved for “Women only.”

But if certain streets are to be reserved for window-gazers and slow-motion pedestrians of the bargain-hunting sex, mere man should enjoy the exclusive use of thoroughfares not associated with the display of feminine furbelows. In fact, some men, who, when suffering from the inconsiderate behaviour of women in streets and buses, acquire the male mental outlook of countries where the harem is still an institution, would willingly forgo the misery of intruding in Oxford-street if conditions were made more comfortable for them elsewhere.

Women undoubtedly are chiefly to blame for the delays which impede the London pedestrian or bus rider. Observe the manner in which before a bus reaches a stopping place women crowd to the rear platform. Not one will alight until the vehicle comes to a dead stop, and meanwhile mere men, ready to jump off while the bus is in motion, are kept fretting and fuming at the rear. Note, too, the way in which a woman will place herself squarely in the entrance to a Tube station and carry on a lengthy conversation with the ticket-collector.

Women, in fact, despite their vaunted emancipation, remain strangely anti-social. Nowhere is this more apparent than in our streets, where the bland obliviousness of the female of the species to the needs and convenience of others threatens at times to reduce pedestrian traffic to a state of perpetual immobility.

(The Daily Sketch, 9 July 1928, p. 7)

A 'furbelow', in case you're wondering (I was), refers to a ruffle, flounce or small, showy ornamentation.

A rather more risqué association was the first to pop into my head at the phrase 'display of feminine furbelows.'

But this was a more innocent time...