“It does make me like it, because it makes me like myself. The gymnasium makes me feel good,—good, do you understand, not merely well.”
“We often have been told that if we all were well we all should be good.”
“I don’t suppose I am good enough to hurt, but it is nice to feel that way. Mind you, I don’t agree at all that women need the gymnasium any more than men do. I have three brothers, and I know some things. I know that the average man is just as much hampered by his clothes as the average woman. I really think he is hampered more, for he defers to his clothes more than a woman defers to hers. A woman’s management of her skirt at least gives her a certain amount of exercise, while a man’s horror of bagging his trousers at the knees has not a single physical compensation. It simply limits his movements.”
“But a woman’s skirt limits her movements.”
“I wouldn’t say that it limited them so much as it directed them.”
“Perhaps you will tell me why most women are or seem to be pigeon toed.”
“I can explain that. It is for the same reason that they waddle when they go up stairs. The reason is the skirt. I can illustrate by a diagram,” and she found a hoople and placed it on the floor. “That we shall say is Figure One. Now, I place here two dumb-bells. These we shall say are feet standing within the radius of the skirt. Now the point of freest action in stepping for the feet B and C obviously lies in the direction of A. Toward A the foot B can move in the longest line without striking the skirt. Hence in walking the tendency for one foot to follow the other in the direction of A and the centrifugal tendency of the toes. As women learn to wear shorter skirts or wear short skirts a greater proportion of the time the likelihood that they will be intoed will naturally decrease.”