|
I have read, a couple of times, that once upon a time, in the Old South, it was routine for families to extract all of their daughters' teeth just as they were coming of age. The story for publication was that it would give them the appearance of perfect teeth in the age before orthodontia, but my own mind always wondered if that was cover to make their daughters more competitive in certain skill sets that might have been of interest to their daughters' suitors. A woman from Mississippi confirmed at least part of that suspicion to me once, relating how very strong social and religious norms actually deterred premarital intercourse in small-town Mississippi, at least in her social set, and that this other skill set was vitally important to her and her close friends in keeping boyfriends and turning them into husbands.
__________________
Extremism in the defense of Liberty is no vice. . . Restraint in the pursuit of Justice is no virtue.
Senator Barry Goldwater, 1964
|