of these articles of apparel and adornment, now her own preferences are paramount when a new acquisition is in order for her personal use. This concentration on trifles of personal embellishment is a lighter aspect of the esthetic sense which the more serious-minded girl expresses in the field of art, music, or literature, or in a love of beauty in nature and elsewhere. In one case, the sense is quite restricted to a self-centered ideal; and in the other it goes out to the world and becomes a social quality.
There is also a change in literary interests. The reading matter now in demand is stories and novels of romance, wherein she can peruse the love episodes of people who are acting the thoughts she feels and fulfil the pictures of her reveries; and, of course, she identifies herself with the heroine. (This latter trait is by no means peculiar to adolescence, as every interested reader of fiction, regardless of age, tends to identify himself, whether he consciously realizes it or not, with the hero or heroine.)
The question of menstruation and other specific problems relating to the sexual life of the young woman have been discussed so fully in Chapter IV that they need not be gone into again here. Other matters having a bearing on sex enlightenment, both to the young man and the young woman, such as an understanding of the problems of sex hygiene, preparation for marriage, venereal diseases and other sexual disorders, can be taken up under their proper headings in the respective preceding chapters.
