Study On Sichuan People's Cognizance On Modern Maidens And Official Efforts To Intervene In Modern Maidens' Costume In 1930's

The term Modern often appeared in Sichuan's newspapers and magazines in 1920s and 1930s. In the most cases, it stands for the positive meaning of modern and fashionable. However, this term mainly contains a negative meaning when used to describe some women wearing and living comparatively modern.In the eyes of Sichuan people in 1930s, modern maidens refers to the women who wore exotic costume, idled away their time in pleasure-seeking without managing a household, and haunted about parks, theatres and tea houses under the pretence of freedom and equality. In the cognizance of the people then, modern maidens' dress was not a display of feminine beauty but a show of ugly performance. In fact, modern maidens' dress and attitudes for life were not compatible with the traditional ethics' limitation on women's appearance and morality, so some Sichuan people regarded women of this kind by the standard of ethics, and they considered that these women were shameless and devoid of morality to break the limitation of the old morality .Furthermore, women's modern was regarded as an extravagant behavior. Therefore, in the speeches then, parasite, plaything and flower vase were often used to describe modern maidens' morality.The times, in which modern maidens appeared, was just the times in which ideology circle set off a fierce debate about where the Women Movement headed for and whether women should go home or not. And Sichuan people's cognizance on women merged with this debate. Some Sichuan people took modern maidens as a...