Self-control necessary.
While improvement of dancing will reduce its dangers, it will not eliminate the problem of self-control for normal young men. They must learn to understand their own emotions. They should be forewarned that others have found danger in dancing. They should know that some strong-willed men have given up dancing when they found that it made more intense the problem of sexual self-control, both mentally and physically. They should know the increased danger if dancing is associated with alcohol, vicious women, immodest dress, extreme freedom of conduct, and other morally depressing influences. Such knowledge along with general sex-education will do much to make dancing not only safe for average young men, but also helpful along social and æsthetic lines.
Extreme dances.
With regard to the extreme dances of the past five years, those who are well informed concerning sexual problems know that many of these dances which polite society has copied from the dens of the underworld are vastly more dangerous than the standard dances.
§ 36. Dress of Women as a Sex Problem for Men
Dress and immorality.
Some of the students of sex problems assert with great emphasis that dress is the responsible factor in the sexual immorality of many men. Accepting the probability that there is some truth in the assertion, what is the solution of the problem? Should women in general adopt a style of dress which in lines and color is as repellently ugly as the official garb of women devotees of certain religious organizations? In short, should women make their dress decidedly unobtrusive and unattractive in order that the sexual temptations of some men may be reduced? The answer must be an emphatic negative. We need more beauty in this life of ours, and we cannot afford to omit any beauty which women express in dress. The pity is that economic conditions so often set a limit to such expression. We must believe in making every possible application of the beauty of nature and art to human life; and beautiful dress on all women, and especially beautiful dress on attractive women, is the most important of such relations of beauty and life.
Dress and sexual appeal.
Accepting, then, beauty of dress as worthy of encouragement, what shall be done about its sexual attractiveness? This is a difficult question in these days with ever-changing fashions whose novelty makes extreme modes more dangerously attractive than they would be if universally adopted for a long term of years. But permanency of extreme styles or general adaptation of modest ones are absolutely impossible for the average woman of to-day. Hence, we must look forward to one extreme style following another. Young men must face the problem and fight their own battles. Like certain widespread diseases, there is constant danger of infection, and the only hope for young men is in special education as a kind of protective inoculation against temptation. This means that young men should be taught to see beauty in woman's form, face, and dress without allowing themselves to get into habits of sensual or physical emotions. Of course, for the normal young man there is sure to be more or less consciousness of emotions stimulated by the beautiful associated with women, but the individual man may train himself to turn such emotions into æsthetic or psychical lines instead of into those which are sensual, animalistic, or physical. In this connection, I have long been of the opinion that training in art appreciation, especially of sculpture, may help many men to an æsthetic attitude towards the human form.
It is well known that beauty of woman's face or form or dress has sometimes led men into immorality; but I often wonder whether such men of weak control would not have fallen sooner or later at the command of some other form of stimulation. At any rate, such men do not lead us to general conclusions, for there are many more men who have been led upward and not downward by the combined beauty of form, face, and dress of women.