Socialite women on the French Riviera had the brilliant idea last winter of dressing for the beach in flowered brassieres and wrap-around shorts, supposedly copied from the modest, knee-length pareu that Tahitian women wear. Last week U. S. manufacturers were plugging “Tahitian pareos” for the Florida socialite trade. But by a cruel irony, in Tahiti itself, biggest of the French Society Islands Tahitian women were forbidden to wear indecent pareus. Instead they were supposed to wear imported French cotton dresses.
Romance is the chief advertised product of Tahiti. According to French tourist agencies, Tahiti, “Pearl of the Pacific,” has everything Hawaii has, and its biggest village Papeete (pop.: 7,000) is “The Paris of the South Seas.” Local realtors rent tourists seaside cottages outside Papeete, complete with female cook. Any native girl found on Papeete’s streets after 9 o’clock at night is given a prostitute’s card and a weekly physical examination. The Tahitians themselves have no words in their language for either prostitution or love.
French officialdom rules Tahiti with blue laws that are only half-heartedly enforced. The natives are required not to drink spirits, steal openly, sing after 9 p. m., kill their unwanted babies. The one prohibition that has really hurt the tourist trade has been that of taking monkey-toed Tahitian girls out of their pareus and putting them into cheap print dresses. Last week this matter reached Paris and French Minister of Colonies Louis Rollin, a Parisian who has lately been preaching cooperation with the colonies, for the sake of French exports.
Briefly he considered, sensibly he decided that the Occident’s spurious “Tahitian pareos” are far more indecent than the Tahitians’ pareus. If socialites may wear the one on the beaches of Florida (see cut) the Polynesians may wear the other in the landscape it was made for. Brusquely last week Minister Rollin rescinded the regulation against pareus in Papeete.
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