Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 August 1882 — Scanty Costumes. [ARTICLE]

Scanty Costumes.

I am no prude, says a writer*at Florewce, but surely the scanty costumes of the ladies are going beyond the boundaries of decency. We shall soon have them naked and not ashamed of it The modern ball-room offers simply an exhibition of ladies’ limbs. Formerly, when a lady was of so generous a disposition as to be anxious to expose her charms to general observation, all she could do was to cut her dress lower than that of het neighbors; but now she is enabled to go beyond this: She can dispense altogether with sleeves, and exhibit to the admiring gaze of all men the vaccination marks of her infancy. In addition to this, and her very low, tight dress, very much tied back, and which impedes the freedom of her movements and defines the shape of her lower limbs as closely as a bathing-dress, she has to drag behind her a long train of drapery, and runs the risk of coming to grief with her light-heeled boots. The question now seems to be among the fair sex as to who shall go furthest, and the present fashion may be aptly described in the following soliloquy: t . Tire way the ladles are progressing Plain words may scarce express; ’Tls by the process of undressing That they achieve “full dress.” right-lacing early graves are filling, Nor that the only ill; Bare necks and shoulders both are“kllling.” But ’tls the girls they kill.