“_The Bull is Mightier Than the Bullet._”
Tiajuana is a small town in Mexico just across the border from San Diego.
It is the Havana of the west coast. The other day a theatre had just
opened up to show the films of the Carpentier-Dempsey fight when the
building caught fire and burned film and all. It was a tough day for the
movies also in San Diego, for the “cops” at a nearby beach resort chose
the day for raiding a playhouse that was screening a South American film
called “Adam and Eve.”
According to the police there was an undue exposure of the feminine
anatomy in the case of Eve. Mebbe so! We have not had the pleasure of
seeing this tid-bit. But, it must have been some exposure if it had
anything on the Aphrodite of the galleries and the halls of sculpture
that are accepted as the product of “Art” and held immune from the
incongruous draperies of Gothic prudery.
On our bathing beaches, too, everything goes on and off, and more
than mere legs is visible to the naked eye unashamed. Why then, is
the feminine form divine the most indecent product of the Creator’s
handiwork? We have asked Gus and he says that all the girls of his
acquaintance are bow-legged. That lets Gus out of the symposium. Perhaps
some of the prude morality mongers can enlighten a poor, hard-working
farmer from Robbinsdale.
Feminine modesty may be only shoe-high and roll-top stockings an
incitement to masculine pruriency—but, thank heaven, most of us are not
fashioned that way. The censorial Puritan may blush like an over-ripe
tomato at the complete revelation of the feminine knee-joint.
However, no masculine connoisseur is going to do an emotional handspring
over such a trivial, especially when it is common observation that
three-quarters of the lower quarters, and other quarters that one sees
parading down Main street nowadays, are too fat or too skinny or too
gnarled to raise much of a ripple on a regular guy’s masculinity.
Immodesty is a relative term and a silk stocking, properly stocked, is
not our idea of indecency. Therefore, we don’t incline to the grannies’
view that the bare leg on stage or screen is immodest for the very reason
that the fat leg and the skinny leg and the bow-legged leg don’t get
there. Or, at least, they don’t stay there long.
* * * * *
Why does a man, having spent his years from the time of puberty to young
manhood in an orgy of flagrant living and self-indulgence, demand of the
honored girl whom he makes his wife that she be of virginal purity? And
why in the name of all that is civilized should he adhere to the idea
that no matter how degenerate he becomes, his wife should bring to him an
unimpeachable chastity?
Our average young wife seeker, following the action of Diogenes,
conducts a vigilant search and after a time he finds the girl who is his
conception of the perfect feminine and marries this most fortunate young
lady. Then in the course of events he discovers or thinks he discovers
a shadow in his wife’s early career, a shadow occurring before he
illuminated with his presence the horizon of her life.
In a great display of righteous indignation he rises upon his hind legs,
lays back his ears and in a loud voice fairly quivering with holy wrath
and outraged decency, he verbally and sometimes physically flays his wife.
And then to secure balm for his wounded spirit he hies himself with all
possible haste to the divorce courts, where he assures the world that
he is a worthy young man of impeccable character; that he, a paragon of
virtue, has been tricked into a marriage with a creature of the streets
and that he is ineradicably besmirched. Is he not a member in high
standing of the Y.M.C.A. and the B.Y.P.U. and therefore blameless?
After he has succeeded in establishing his claim to godliness through
the process of dragging his wife’s name through the mire of the courts
he feels the need of consolation; so cranking his trusty automobile, he
flivvers down some shady avenue, inviting passing flappers to share the
honor of his society and the pleasure of his car.
Puritanically speaking, such a standard of morality was considered quite
the proper thing but Puritanism flourished during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, which time incidentally, is far removed from the
present.
* * * * *
Far be it from us to harp too much on styles. We believe if a girl has
shapely limbs and a sparkling pair of eyes she has as much right to show
one as the other and as an anonymous writer in a Minneapolis newspaper
says, “There is no such thing as immodest dress—it is all in the mind.”
Samuel Butler says: “Even Euclid had to assume something before he could
prove anything. Truly we live by faith.” Thus it can be said that it is
all in the mind. But I do submit that what a thing is to anyone, lies in
his reaction or response to it not in the thing itself. If in a painting,
a statue or a shapely pair of legs beneath a short skirt, one person
sees only the beauty, an esthetic reaction to grace, perfect proportion
or symmetry, while another “sees red.” Where lies the cause? The object
viewed is the same. Therefore, as someone so aptly put it, “it is all in
the eyes of the beholder.”
If short skirts and low necks arouse sex instincts, why howl about it?
Rather be happy in the knowledge that one is normal, for the sex instinct
is a natural one. When sex desire stops, the physical manifestations of
life will cease. Those thoughts may require self-control, but since that
element is a necessary concomitant to civilized society, the exercise
of it will be beneficial. The trend of human progress, while almost
imperceptible, appears to be toward the ideal in human relations and away
from the cocoanut throwing hit-her-on-the-head-with-a-club status, and if
some men can’t withstand the sight of bare knees they are insufficiently
advanced in the scale of civilization.
Which brings us to a quotation by Stevenson, that all reformers and
custodians of the neighbors’ morals would do well to heed. It is:
“There is an idea abroad among moral people that they should make their
neighbors good. One person I have to make good—myself. But my duty to my
neighbor is much more nearly expressed by saying that I have to make him
happy if I may.” Live and let live.