Doris and Defining Feminine.

I was in a shop in Ashbourne today, and the PA was playing Doris Day singing Move Over Darling.

‘I love this song,’ I said to one of the shop assistants. I do, you know. I always have, even when I was a kid and it was still being played on the radio.

A brief discussion ensued, mostly along the lines of how popular songs could be well raunchy in those days, but the raunchiness was more subtly expressed than it is today. An elderly woman agreed. ‘Women were so much more feminine then,’ she said.

Were they? I’m not sure, for how does one define femininity? And I expect the feminists would argue that even if they were, they were also more dominated by their husbands and a culture run almost entirely by men.

But I’m not even sure about that. My great grandmother certainly wasn’t dominated by her husband. The poor bloke fled to America to escape her violent ways. And when I asked my mother why Mr Peach down the road had blue scars on his face, she said they’d been caused by Mrs Peach hitting him with a poker. More feminine indeed.

And then I had another thought. Maybe the woman was right and young women these days really are less feminine than they used to be. Maybe that’s why today’s young singing stars feel the need to take their clothes off in public. Maybe it’s the only way they can prove they really are women.

OK, so now I’m being facetious. And to continue the humorous theme, I still like Groucho Marx’s famous quotation regarding dear Doris:

‘I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.’

Anyway, here’s dear Doris being supremely feminine, early sixties style, and doing raunchy in a subtle way.