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Sir: After swallowing and, at times, choking on an unending diet of the Pepsi Generation, the Now Generation, the gappy generation, with-it, hung-up, love-in, way-out, freak-out, out of sight, uptight, trips, hips, yips, drugs, thugs, dig, groove, swing and all the power that LOVE can bring, I wish to protest your article on Rudi Gernreich [Jan. 26]. Where's the fun gone? The mystery? The wondering and then the knowing? What satisfaction can one get out of the "advancing years" when one has shaved, plucked, lacquered, sprayed and, in general, erased the things that make people young? Mr. Gernreich has hit upon something better than the Pill. Who's going to want to make love to one's own reflection?
MRS. ANTHONY J. KEELEY JR. Red Bank, N.J.
Sir: It was awful enough to hear that California's "culture" was predicted as the wave of the future—but Rudi Gernreich's unisex (more properly, nonsex) predictions really tear it! I'm a mere tad of 48 who had planned on living another 100 years —but if that's what I'll have to look forward to, swing now, sweet chariot.
ALLEN FOBES St. Paul
Hole in the Fabric
Sir: The reaction against a ten-(dead)-tiger coat [Jan. 19] may not be just from conservationists but from much of the general public as well. However, no amount of laws or game preserves are going to save wild creatures as long as there is the combination of greed (the hunter) and vanity (the purchaser). Only when public attitudes remove the desirability of owning a fur will the killing become unrewarding. Maybe I'll never have personal knowledge of whether that wild tiger continues to live or not. Yet when anything becomes extinct, there is an uncanny feeling that somewhere a hole has been made in the fabric of creation.
MRS. A. D'AMATO Bronxville, N.Y.
Sir: The conservationists' furor over fur coats calls to mind Vernon Bartlett's poem that appeared some time back in the New Statesman, "The Leopard Coats":
Once in a moment of great generosity
God has shown to me
A leopard running free.
How, from that moment, could he
expect of me, Born without his tolerance, calmly to
see All those women, those bloody awful
women, Dressed up in leopard skins and sitting
down to tea?
DIANE AHRENS New Orleans
Victorian Ways
Sir: The two-seater bath [Jan. 19] is not new. It is said to have been used by the gilded youth of the ancien regime. The man faced the girl and between them was an allegedly well-secured wire-mesh screen surmounted by a tabletop for playing cards, snacks, and perhaps a carafe of wine.
More surprisingly, at a Scottish hydro a few years ago, I found myself occupying one of two double rooms that shared a huge bathroom in which stood a fine 19th century two-seater bath (a face-to-facer again). Just the place for Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice. We underestimate the Victorians in so many ways.
N. T. GRIDGEMAN Ottawa