Women in Plot to Banish Busts
French Writer on Feminine Matters Declares Whole Aim in Present Fashions is to Conceal Female Form and Make Women Look Like Boys.
By Alfred M. Murray
Staff Correspondent of The World
Special Cable to The World
Paris, May 14.—The aim of present day fashion is to conceal the feminine form, according to Marcel Prevost, France’s foremost writer on women psychology, who says that certain prominent Paris dressmaker ought to be hanged “for having boasted in a newspaper of his invention of bandages for the purpose of gradually suppressing the bust.”
Prevost writes bitterly of the craze which has seized women for abandoning their fight for social and political equality with men and, on the other hand, showing a frenzied desire to be nothing more than women in instinct while doing their utmost to abolish in their appearance all indications of sex. Talking of to-day’s case in dress, Prevost says:
“This inoffensive looking sheath has for its object concealment of the feminine form—not through prudery, but in order to prevent the body inclosed within it from being distinguished at first glance from that of a boy of the same age garbed in the same manner. What a fine invention for our modern couturiers to be proud of: As nature opposes obstacles to this identification, they further lower the waist belt beneath said obstacles—if necessary even to the knees.
“As for the bust, it must be dissimulated as much as possible. But unfortunately for their purpose, something is left of it notwithstanding all their zeal. And so this garconification (an allusion to Victor Marguerite’s book, “The Batchelor Girl”) is not completed by bobbing the hair.”
Prevost declares that “the French woman now loves to be a mere plaything, an object of luxury, and has no wish to share men’s prerogatives or authority that result from labor.” He concludes: "After five years of peace, the moral damages caused by the war are not repaired."
[“Women in Plot to Banish Busts, Marcel Prevost Bitterly Wails,” The World, May 15, 1924, p.1.]
By Alfred M. Murray
Staff Correspondent of The World
Special Cable to The World
Paris, May 14.—The aim of present day fashion is to conceal the feminine form, according to Marcel Prevost, France’s foremost writer on women psychology, who says that certain prominent Paris dressmaker ought to be hanged “for having boasted in a newspaper of his invention of bandages for the purpose of gradually suppressing the bust.”
Prevost writes bitterly of the craze which has seized women for abandoning their fight for social and political equality with men and, on the other hand, showing a frenzied desire to be nothing more than women in instinct while doing their utmost to abolish in their appearance all indications of sex. Talking of to-day’s case in dress, Prevost says:
“This inoffensive looking sheath has for its object concealment of the feminine form—not through prudery, but in order to prevent the body inclosed within it from being distinguished at first glance from that of a boy of the same age garbed in the same manner. What a fine invention for our modern couturiers to be proud of: As nature opposes obstacles to this identification, they further lower the waist belt beneath said obstacles—if necessary even to the knees.
“As for the bust, it must be dissimulated as much as possible. But unfortunately for their purpose, something is left of it notwithstanding all their zeal. And so this garconification (an allusion to Victor Marguerite’s book, “The Batchelor Girl”) is not completed by bobbing the hair.”
Prevost declares that “the French woman now loves to be a mere plaything, an object of luxury, and has no wish to share men’s prerogatives or authority that result from labor.” He concludes: "After five years of peace, the moral damages caused by the war are not repaired."
[“Women in Plot to Banish Busts, Marcel Prevost Bitterly Wails,” The World, May 15, 1924, p.1.]
posted by A. Mattson at 10:11 PM
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