University of Virginia Library

Marlboro Men Vs. 'Twigs'

Twiggy was bad enough,
says the Northerner of Bemidji
(Minn.) State College.

For the average girl watcher, the
prospect of encountering thousands
of mini-clad telephone poles
with waist-long hair was enough
to send him running to the post
office clutching his Playboy subscription.
But now the girls face
the same dilemma.

One British woman who runs
a male model agency reports that
average chest measurements of her
men have shrunk from 41 inches a
few years ago to 33 inches today.
That's only two inches bigger than
the Twig herself.

And take a look at the current
crop of guys adorning the pages
of the big, slick magazines. They
have shoulder-length hair, willow
builds and not a single hair on
their chests.

The most extreme manifestation
of this Twig compulsion has been
the presentation of a line of formal
and semi-formal skirts for men.
With the advent of hairy calves
protruding from knee-length kilts,
we fear the girls may justifiably
go inside with the retired girl-watchers
and switch on the TV
in hopes of catching Alan Ladd
re-runs.

We fear that world designers
can no longer be held to be
morally good if their aim, as it
appears to be, is to emasculate
modern man, de-feminize modern
woman and turn us into one
asexual society in which we won't
be able to tell the swingers from
the swishers.

Men, don't give up your
trousers. Whether skirts get longer
or shorter, let the women wear
them. Let's encourage a return
to the day of the Marlboro Man,
when a fellow didn't have to apologize
for having hair on his chest,
which, back then, was supposed
to be considerably bigger than
Twiggy's.