I didn't keep the paper so can't quote verbatim but I read in "Dear Abby s" column the other day a complaint by a young lady about boys' tight breeches and haircuts, or perhaps I should say absence of haircuts. She doesn't like for the boys to ape the girls.

I must confess that I agree with the young lady. There are other and less reprehensive ways of showing our immaturity. I read that in some instances the boys are using rouge and lipstick. I haven't seen any of them yet. When I was that age we wore our hair pretty long but it wasn't because we were trying to look like the girls. We didn't have the money to pay for a haircut. We would wait until uncle Dave or somebody with "experience" came along, then Mama would haul out the scissorsthe same ones we used to cut our toe-nails and other things too tough to biteand we were given the treatment. Sometimes we looked like our hair had been trimmed with an eggbeater but we got it off.

Our pants were sometimes too tight but it wasn't because we were trying to show our pretty figures. When you saw a boy with tight breeches on then you pretty well knew that one of two things had happened: Either he had outgrown them or his papa had done the buying and didn't know the size.

However, I can't get too lathered up over the plight of the poor girls who don't like sissified boys. I see some girls with their hair all glued and sticking up until it looks like a hollow stump full of granddaddy spiders. I haven't heard the boys say whether they like this or not. And as for the tight breeches the girls wear, they may look sexier (if that is the desired effect, and I can't think of any other reason for them) but they more often look vulgar, and by no stretch of the imagination can they be called modest. And the bible says that women should adorn themselves with "MODEST APPAREL" (I Tim. 2.9).

It strikes me as a little inconsistent for the girls to complain about boys looking like girls. Haven't the girls been trying for the past several generations to be like the men? They can vote, sit on juries, hold public office, smoke cigarettes, pipes and cigars, drink liquor, swear, and frequent the gambling houses. You name it, some of them do it. They want to act like men but be treated like ladies. A woman who acts like a woman is the most desirable thing in the world. But there is nothing more disgusting than a mannish womanunless it is a womanish man.

TRUTH MAGAZINE X: 3, p. 1a. December 1965