The girl usually "picked up" dresses immodestly or in the extreme of style, even though she is essentially shabby and poorly clad. To-day business sees to it that fripperies are within the reach of every purse.
She usually corresponds to a type of prettiness favored in the community, often what is nowadays called the chicken type. Plump legs and fairly prominent bosom and hips are symbols of those desired among all grades of men, together with a pretty face. The homely girl finds it much easier to walk unmolested.
If she appears intelligent and firm, the above qualities will only entitle her to glances, respectful and otherwise. The sex adventurer hates to be rebuffed, and he is not desperately in love, so that he will not risk his vanity. If she appears of that port vivacious type just above the moron level—in other words if she is neither bright nor really feeble-minded—then sex pressure is increased. The feeble-minded girl of the moron type, or the over-innocent and unenlightened girl, is always in danger.
There is further the sexually excited or the uninhibited girl. We must differentiate between those who attempt no control, and those whose surge of desire is beyond the normal limits. The uninhibited of both sexes are a large group, and the bulk of the prostitutes are deficient in this respect rather than in intelligence. Sometimes inhibition arrives late, after sexual immorality has commenced. In men this is common, but unfortunately for women, society stands in their way when this occurs with them. "Youth must have its fling" is a masculine privilege denied to feminine offenders.
The desire for a good time plays havoc with the uninhibited girl. Unable to find interest in her work, which too often is uninteresting, desiring good clothes and excitement, she discovers that these are within her reach if she follows her instincts. What starts out as a flirtation ends in social disaster, and a girl finds out that some men who give good times expect to be paid for them.
Since our study is not a pathological treatise, we must omit further consideration of the offender and dismiss without more comment the whole range of the perverter. It suffices to say that the perverted are often such congenitally, in which case nothing can be done for them, and others are the results of certain environments, which range all the way from girls' boarding-schools to the palaces of kings.
In ancient times, and in many countries to-day, certain perversions were so common as to defy belief, and we are compelled to associate with some of the greatest names, practices[1] that shock us. These same ancients would denounce as unnatural in as hearty terms the increasing practices of child-limitation among us.
[1] I pass over as out of the range of this book the question raised by Freud, whether or not we are all of us homosexual as well as heterosexual.
The sex desires and instincts struggle with, overcome or harmonize with the social instincts. It would be impossible to portray even the simplest sex life from the mental standpoint. The chastest woman who is unconscious of sex desire is motivated by romance and the sex feelings and customs of others in her ideas of happiness and right behavior. The cynical profligate, indulging every sensual urge, in so far as he can, must guide himself by the resistance of society, by the necessity of camouflage, the fear of public opinion and often the impediment of his own early training. Men and women start out perhaps as romantic idealists, enter marriage, and in the course of their experiences become almost frankly sensual. And in the opposite direction, men and women wildly passionate in youth develop counter tendencies that swing them into restraint and serene self-control. There are those to whom sex is mere appetite, to be indulged and put out of the way, so as not to interfere with the great purposes of success; there are those to whom it is a religion, carried on with ceremonials and rites; there are those to whom it is an obsession, and their minds are in a sexual stew at all times. There are the under-inhibited, spoken of above, and there are the over-inhibited, Puritanical, rebelling at the flesh as such, disguising all their emotions, reluctant to admit their humanness and the validity of pleasure.
The romantic ideal, glorifying a sort of asexual love of perfect men and women, asceticism which permits sex only as a sort of necessary evil and sensuality which proclaims the pleasure of sex as the only joy and scoffs at inhibition influence the lives of us all. The effect of the forbidden, the tantalizing curiosity aroused and the longing to rise above the level of lust make the sex adjustment the most difficult of all and produce the queerest results. Sex is a road to power and to failure, a road to health and sickness. As in all adjustments, there are some who are conscious of but few difficulties, who are moral or immoral without struggle or discontent. Contrasted with these are the ones who find morality a great burden, and those who, yielding to desire, find continuous inner conflict and dissatisfaction and lowered self-valuation as a result.