Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 February 1913 — SEXES CHANGE ATTIRE [ARTICLE]

SEXES CHANGE ATTIRE

PLACES WHERE WOMEN DRESS AS MffN t AND VICE VERSA, j \ ______ Alpine Dairy Maids, at Their Work, Wear Masculine Dress,'aa Do the Females in the Extreme North —Brigands in BklrtaThere are places in the world , where women dress in men’s clothing and men don women’s apparel. Even In Paris there are women dressed In cheap, coarse, masculine attire, working as teamsters and day laborere. While It is against the law, the police wink at the fact and allow them: to. earn peaceably their daily , wages. In Persia, in some of the interior parts, the women wear the strangest, oddest trouser garments. They seem to like them, too, from the faot that they cling to them in spite of all efforts to make them don feminine atr tire. Then there are the Alpine dairy maids who dress as men when they go about their work and look pretty* - if we are inclined to take evidence from the numbers of men who yearly persuade them to cast off their masculine dress and put on more clinging qostumes.* But then their eyes are so bright and their cheeks so red that they couldn’t really look homely in anything they might choose to wear. Again, far in the north, where it is freezing cold most of the time, and people dress to be comfortable and not to look pretty, the women are actually forced Into trousers to keep warm. The ancient women warrior's always wore trousers. But their reasons were' half masculine in manner and appearance, and dreßßed tS accentuate their qualities. They had to make themselves Into fierce looking creatures toterrify the men on the opposing side, and from all acounts they succeeded admirably. As for the stronger sex, there stllL seem to be men In existence who wear women’s garb and enjoy It. In; certain parts Of Greece, Spain, and. Albania there are bands of desperate brigands who, when they are decked out for attacks on strangers or neighbors, look for all the world like grand; opera ballet girls, In their short* brightly colored skirts, which are made very full, and sometimes even ruffled a bit. They seem tremendously proud of their attire, and rival bands strive to surpass each other in vividness of patterns and newness of styles.