Letters to the Editor

Dear Virginia:

I am writing this from Zagreb, Yugoslavia. I have nothing particularly staggering to tell you and the rest of the girls, but there are times when something in the streets of Yugoslavia will remind me of the arbitrary definitions attached to certain behavior, and relative positions insisted upon by those who have traveled no farther than their shadows, that I am struck by the absurd difficulties we women must put up with to express nothing more than our own femininity in our own ways in our Own

towns.

My first stop in this country was in the city of Rijeka, the largest Yugoslavian seaport. In my notes, I have the following few sentences about the women (GG's) in this city:

"The women are broad and very attractive. They are not the thin whisps of manufactured femininity. but rather wholesome and handsome, with dark expressive eyes and mature faces.

Although women do all kinds of work, the man is obviously the "boss", and the woman is to be patient and tend to his needs and desires. Another feature of the women is their short hair. Many of them (perhaps one-forth) have it out just slightly longer than a man's. Even the children have this style. It sometimes seems as if the young boys are dressed as girls, and men walk the streets as women."

Perhaps this last sentence is a case of wishful

thinking. But it is the spectacle of women who, in Yugo- slavia, wear very little make-up (and most lipstick is pale), cut their hair short, and have thick, strong legs,

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