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RELATION OF CLOTHES TO THE BODY
RELATION OF CLOTHES- TO
THE BODY
LOTHING should serve to protect
       the body from cold and heat and
       criticism, to enhance the value of
       the wearer's personality in connec-
tion with his work and life, and to please-
or at least not to offend the eyes of sweet-
minded honest beholders.
  Therefore the laws of ethics and the laws
of aesthetics meet and have common cause
in questions of dress. That which is real-
ly practical, comfortable, beautiful, can-
not be immoral. That which is not prac-
tical, comfortable, beautiful, falls short,
somehow, of the fulfillment of the moral
law, even though the wearer, be not alto-
gether to blame.
  Clothing that does not sufficiently protect
the body from heat or cold or other in-
clemencies is unhealthy and for that reason
immoral. To wear it is physical anarchy.
  Clothing which hinders us in the accom-
plishment of our work-hiigh heels for the
shop girl, lace frills on the sleeves of the
stenographer-a gown of woolen goods or
silk on the cook or houseworker is at once
immoral and unlovely, because it is unsuit-
able and denotes a mind and heart in re-
bellion against the task. In like manner
the most luxurious garments of fashionable
women are immoral oftentimes just because
they declare values not actually present in
the personality. Our clothing should never
be allowed to hinder the expansion of our
spirits in the life and opportunity that is
theirs.
  Clothing which offends the -eye of the
honest and sweet-minded beholder-the hat
too large, or too rakish, the skirt too tight,
the stocking or the lingerie too transparent,
the silk too cheap or worse still-soiled--
these things, seen daily on our streets,
cheapen life by sickening the senses. The
aim of the girls who wear such things is
more obvious in its pathos than the hats-
the desire to attract attention: the ideal is
more transparently seen than the young,
unprotected shoulders and ankles through
their mockery of covering-it is to copy
the rich at all costs-the rich "who are al-
ways right!" Here is the terrible tragedy
of the weak, the ignorant, the woman
baffled and thwarted in her normal craving
for love and beauty, driven to this abnormal
imitation of the foibles of the rich.
  Clothes should be appropriate to the lives
T22
we live-to the work we do. Our clothes
should belong to us. We should be able to
move freely and comfortably and grace-
fully in them, to do our work well in them,
without hindrance or annoyance, to enjoy
recreations in themn--in those we have
chosen for that purpose only-and at all
times, to be ourselves, at our best in them.
   In our present period of development
women's clothing does not express the per-
sonality of the individual woman, despite
all that the modistes say to the contrary.
Women are still a prey to absurdities in
fashion largely because their lives are lived
in obedience to conventions and dress has
been a conventional matter, to a large ex-
tent, since the beginning of time.
  But when women have freedom, in child-
hood and youth to seek out an individual
work and develop themselves for it-when
they no longer feel justified in making un-
limited demands on the purse of husband or
father just because he, in his pride, so
strictly limits their activties-then this ab-
normal passion for dress will 'be done away,
and it will be the desire of each woman to
be comfortable and beautiful in her clothes
and to choose those that are approprite to
her life and interests. Give a woman her
own life, her own work, her own interests,
her own burdens and responsibilities and
she will gradually find her own proper
clothing, to go with them-that which is es-
sentially suitable.
  It is not merely sentimentality and tender
associations that lend beauty to the blue
gingham of the trained nurse, that render
most bewitching of all head dresses for a
pretty girl, her spotless cap, or that make
her ample immaculate apron attractive.
Nor is it the costliness of them. It is the
wholesome appropriateness of them-their
suitability to the uses for which they were
made-their essential simplicity and sincer-
ity. Only a very pretty woman very well
dressed can go into a hospital ward and
court comparisons with the average nurse.
And many a man, seeing that blue gingham
in its austerity and its comfort flitting
about the ward has wondered why his wife
at home does not "tog herself out" in the
same way to do her housework.
  To shelter our bhodies and to express our
personalities, to make bright the lives of
those who must look upon us-to sweeten
and -cleanse their ideals of womankind-for
these ends, let us make clothes.
               MARGUERITE WILKINSON.