Here in San Francisco I have several neighborhood such-stores where the lady clerks now know my taste in pettis and skirts and formals. Gently, they protest if I buy a skirt that looks too slim at the waist for me. (I haven't told them my bows and placketing tricks.) Or . . . they will suggest certain items that they know I am looking for or customarily buy, with a slight conspirational smile, saying, "She might like this."

She generally does.

I suppose in time, as does seem to happen, I will be invited to tea, rather in the daughter role which is a most satisfactory and comforting situation. One feels like oneself, thus-wise.

I am not in the least against the gentle erotics which our major fashion magazines are driving the female population, not to mention their opposite numbers, almost crazy with . . . as though costume were a complete and self-completing thing in itself. . . but it's also a quiet, even joyous, really non-erotic thing simply to be girls together. I think that's even more deeply reassuring than the shock of finding that one can be a desperately provoking wench by one's initial experiments in the purchasable mystique of She...

... purchasable almost as cheaply as the attic trunk explorations.

Ah me ...

a She.

*

The prospect of having a lady for our President doesn't bother us so much; it's the thought of having a man for our First Lady.

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About those topless bathing suits, Gino Ferro notes, "They're fine for the girl who doesn't want to be just another pretty face."

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Notice on gate of nudist colony: "Clothed for the winter."

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