Page:Side talks with girls (1895).djvu/123

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The Girl Who Uses Slang
111

anybody else, who accentuates the width of her skirts, the brim of her hat, who, because pink roses are fashionable, has the greatest number of pink roses and those deepest in tone, this girl is slangy in dress. She is the girl whose dress tires your eyes as you look at it. She is the girl who, the very minute she enters a room, makes you conscious of her presence by the noise of her skirts, and who gives you an overpowering sense of her having too much to wear. That is one type.

Another is the girl, who, seizing the jaunty fashion of cloth skirts, soft blouses, and pretty jackets, makes it slangy by having the soft blouse developed into a loud, stiff shirt, and the jacket made to look as much like a man's coat as possible. With this she wears a masculine tie, a stiff plain hat, and, unconsciously, she assumes the manners of a man. But as she is not a man she does not succeed in this, and the consequence is that she appears to you as being neither a feminine woman nor a manly boy. Dress has its influence over everybody, and girls who are slangily dressed, that is, who go to extremes in any style of dressing, certainly become exaggerated in their manners and speech.