Something that has bothered me, on and off, for years.
In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck at one point disguises himself as a girl for totally plot-consistent reasons which I forget. We can assume that in the style of mid-nineteenth century frontier America he wore a long dress and a bonnet, and he was young enough that five o'clock shadow and a deep voice wouldn't have given him away.
What does give him away is that something drops into his lap - probably off a table, I forget - and to catch it he brings his knees sharply together to increase the catching area. A sharp-eyed woman sees this and deduces he is a boy in disguise, as a girl would have moved her knees apart to spread out her dress and increase the catching area even more.
I've never been entirely convinced by this and have visions of Mark Twain muttering to himself, dammit, I've put him in disguise and now someone needs to spot it, how can I do that in a family-appropriate manner? And he came up with this. Possibly not having asked a real girl first.
A couple of colleagues who have been known to wear dresses from time to time say they would still subscribe to the allegedly boy-typical, knees-together motion. Anyone going to contradict?
I am not sure I count as a real girl, not least because I don't think I've put a dress on in getting on five years. I do wear a skirt occasionally though, and I'm definitely with your colleagues: my instinct is 'bring legs together', whatever I'm wearing. This would be more to trap whatever's falling between my knees than to increase the catching area, though.
ReplyDeleteAlso it doesn't seem very ladylike to spread your legs. Surely it would be more appropriate to let the item fall to the floor, possibly fainting at the distress of it all.
Indeed, others have commented that the "spread 'em wide" option isn't particularly ladylike. One colleague also points out that a polite young gel should be sitting upright with knees together in the first place.
ReplyDeleteTwain = own3d.