[Sidenote: Dress and immorality.]
Some of the students of sex problems assert with great emphasis that
dress is the responsible factor in the sexual immorality of many men.
Accepting the probability that there is some truth in the assertion,
what is the solution of the problem? Should women in general adopt a
style of dress which in lines and color is as repellently ugly as the
official garb of women devotees of certain religious organizations? In
short, should women make their dress decidedly unobtrusive and
unattractive in order that the sexual temptations of _some_ men may be
reduced? The answer must be an emphatic negative. We need more beauty
in this life of ours, and we cannot afford to omit any beauty which
women express in dress. The pity is that economic conditions so often
set a limit to such expression. We must believe in making every
possible application of the beauty of nature and art to human life; and
beautiful dress on all women, and especially beautiful dress on
attractive women, is the most important of such relations of beauty and
life.
[Sidenote: Dress and sexual appeal.]
Accepting, then, beauty of dress as worthy of encouragement, what
shall be done about its sexual attractiveness? This is a difficult
question in these days with ever-changing fashions whose novelty makes
extreme modes more dangerously attractive than they would be if
universally adopted for a long term of years. But permanency of extreme
styles or general adaptation of modest ones are absolutely impossible
for the average woman of to-day. Hence, we must look forward to one
extreme style following another. Young men must face the problem and
fight their own battles. Like certain widespread diseases, there is
constant danger of infection, and the only hope for young men is in
special education as a kind of protective inoculation against
temptation. This means that young men should be taught to see beauty in
woman's form, face, and dress without allowing themselves to get into
habits of sensual or physical emotions. Of course, for the normal young
man there is sure to be more or less consciousness of emotions
stimulated by the beautiful associated with women, but the individual
man may train himself to turn such emotions into aesthetic or psychical
lines instead of into those which are sensual, animalistic, or
physical. In this connection, I have long been of the opinion that
training in art appreciation, especially of sculpture, may help many
men to an aesthetic attitude towards the human form.
It is well known that beauty of woman's face or form or dress has
sometimes led men into immorality; but I often wonder whether such men
of weak control would not have fallen sooner or later at the command
of some other form of stimulation. At any rate, such men do not lead us
to general conclusions, for there are many more men who have been led
upward and not downward by the combined beauty of form, face, and dress
of women.
[Sidenote: Duty of women.]
While we refuse to excuse men who allow the sexual suggestiveness of
women's dress to overcome their self-control, we should at the same
time recognize that women have themselves to blame for much of the
existing situation. I believe it is true that the average woman does
not understand how dress that makes unusual exposure of the body may
make a sexual appeal to men; but there is no such innocence on the part
of the demi-mondes by whom many of the most dangerous styles are
introduced. Perhaps women of intelligence and good standing may some
day come to realize their responsibility for wearing clothing that
means unusual temptation for men. However, this seems Utopian in these
years when even women of the best groups are wearing equivocal dress;
and so men must learn to fight their own battles against natural
instincts stirred to greater intensity by dress invented to increase
the trade of the women of the underworld.