Skirts and ankles

WHAT precisely is the malady called ‘‘flatfoot’’? I ask, not as fearing myself to be of the platypus tribe (‘‘platypus’’ means, I believe, flatfooted) but in commiseration of the 70 per cent of English women who, it is affirmed, are in that condemnation — convicted by the short skirt. Time was when a novelist might say ‘‘a tiny foot peeped out below her dress’’, or even ‘‘she displayed a neatturned ankle’’. ‘‘But,’’ writes ‘‘Moralist, M.D.’’, in the National Review, July number — ‘‘at the present time a woman is

considered correct so long as she does not display her knees. Good or bad, this is due to the short skirt, and I know my place well enough to prevent my attacking the present fashion, which may be a chilly one, but it certainly allows freedom of movement and discourages dirt.’’ And so say all of us. Nevertheless —

If on August 1, 1915 (Registration Day) every woman had been compelled by law to be snapshotted from behind as she walked and have her photograph attached to her registration card, the present fashion would have been killed by women themselves in two months from that date. Soon we should have learned in private conversations and women’s weekly newspapers that ‘‘really these skirts are very unbecoming’’. Miss A. would say, ‘‘I can’t think how dear Mrs B. with such feet can wear a short skirt.’’ Mrs C., ‘‘I am thankful I have not such wretched ankles as Miss D.’’ . . .

Heading his article, ‘‘Deformed Feet

in Women’’, this writer (summed up by one critic as ‘‘ungallant but candid’’) affirms that ‘‘Flatfoot exists in at least 70 per cent of women between 15 and 45.’’ And his conclusion:— Either lengthen the skirt and conceal it, or adopt a system of vigorous ‘‘footdrill’’ to correct it. Frankly, I am puzzled. Here in Dunedin, looking so far as it is becoming in me to look at what the short skirt reveals, I see only well arched insteps, with ankles tidy and trim that sit neatly on the threeinch heels. Flatfoot cannot yet have invaded the antipodes, thanks be. — Civis.