It’s not that she believes in imposing choices on young women. On the contrary, she believes in equipping them to make their own choices–real choices, one they’re actually making for themselves instead of being coerced into by peers, television, or a vague desire to be cool.

And to that end, it occurs to her, rather than raise girls under bell jars it would be wiser to keep them well-informed about the realities of the world. The girl who knows that some men are cads, some people are fools, and not everyone you meet has your best interests at heart is in a much stronger position from which to determine her course of conduct.

So a truly sweet, old-fashioned girl should probably have a core of shrewd common sense with which to defend that sweetness…

But it’s difficult to be online at all without tripping over all the latest from Mr. Stephen Fry, and his latest latest–a series of inane comments about women, and then a petulant flounce from Twitter–is all over her various friends-lists and feeds.

Like many people, Miss Verity will be forever fond of Mr. Fry for his portrayal of Jeeves. She loves Jeeves so very much that she feels a kind of gratitude that anyone was able to play him well enough that she could enjoy the performance, instead of weeping bitterly because he wasn’t enough like book-Jeeves.

Also, she loves plummy accents and stunning vocabularies, and Mr. Fry has been blessed with both.

But increasingly his public utterances have come to resemble some dreadful attack of oral flatulence more so than rational human speech, although at least if it were gastro-intestinal distress from which the man was suffering the rest of polite society would have the decency to pretend not to notice, instead of endlessly retweeting it.

For his sake as much as hers, she devoutly wishes someone would take the gentleman aside and somehow convince him of the virtue of not sharing every silly thought and hurt feeling that seize him. It should have been done when he was about six, but since it evidently wasn’t, she hopes it’s done soon.

Which, paradoxically, has put her in the mood to shop. She’s resorted to online browsing, and a sort of daydreaming-almost-planning. Which is probably a good thing, really, as by the time July rolls around she should have a reasonable, well-thought-out shopping list.

In the meantime, isn’t this dress lovely? It’s available here, from JenClothing.

Nevertheless, occasionally her eyes are caught, and so it is that lately she’s noticed something absolutely delightful: young men are wearing hats.

Miss Verity applauds this development wholeheartedly. They look dashing and gentlemanly. Mind you, some young men never stopped wearing them–she knows certain young males in Western Canada (she is almost positive this holds true in the Western USA as well, but correct her if she’s wrong) still wear cowboy hats, thereby managing to look both rakish and steadfastly masculine.  She sniffs indignantly and mutters “piffle!” when anybody she knows attempts to deride this look using words like “hick;” in Miss Verity’s experience, young people from the country are every bit as intelligent and complex as their city counterparts, and often rather more accomplished. It’s unsurprising, really, that rural males should have had sense enough to know they looked better hatted than not. She is quite pleased to see the city versions have caught on to this as well.

Which can, obviously, be a negative or merely stupid thing (as with confirmation bias), but which can also make life just that mush easier to live. It’s comforting, and pleasant, to sometimes have like-minded people to turn to.

And so religious people seek out others of their faith, not just for worship but to share recreational time and inspiring books and items.

Or, to take a destructive example, people stricken with eating disorders sometimes try to find fellow-sufferers, and too much of that reinforcement and you end up with those ghastly pro-ana sites.

And this, it suddenly occurred to Miss Verity this morning, is why she craves websites that share a sense of gentle modesty, of quiet femininity, and of a slightly old-fashioned bent–but not ones that, in the pursuit of those values, are strident or angry or overbearing. It is because, of course, she wants to be able to do the same thing online that she prefers to do offline: surround herself, at least sometimes, with those who have similar values.

She does not quite think that this gentleman’s method is entirely efficacious, however–it is, alas, hard to work up much enthusiasm for resubscribing to a service when one knows it is counting one’s silent days against one, having decided in advance to throw you out not for misbehaviour but for reticence.  Not, she concludes, her type of lounge at all.

Dear Sir/Madam,

Your account at the Smoking Lounge message board has been deleted.

This has been done either because the unusual spelling or your
username of choice and/or email address has led us to suspect your
account is used as spambot, or because of a complete lack of posting
activity for more than six months.  Are you in fact no spambot, and/or
do you wish to be an active member of the Smoking Lounge, we do beg
your pardon for the removal of your account and compel you to
re-register with us.  However, we ask your understanding in this
matter, for our forums have recently fallen victim to high quantities
of spam, plus a great number of accounts with zero post count takes up
unnecessary space of our database.  I wish to urge that you are most
welcome at the Smoking Lounge, if you are indeed a real person, and
hope that, in that case, you might consider joining us again!

Yours sincerely,

Ottens (Administrator) <n.ottens@gmail.com>

Dear Sir or Madam,
Thank you for your kind offer that I spend my time signing up again for a message board which I had not yet had time to actually use. I am sure you can understand why I do not wish to do so–when I do have free time, I prefer to use it at boards that welcome and appreciate people who take their time about joining in conversations with strangers, and not at a website which rather petulantly scolds one for silence and then deletes one’s account.

Perhaps one of the dear gentlefolk who have been similarly unsubscribed might know of such a place? In a spirit of hopefulness I have included them in my reply, and I eagerly await their suggestions.
~Miss Verity

Miss Verity has also discovered she has no idea how to reply to comments here; if she replies with another comment on her own post, does the person to whom she is speaking get notified? Replying to the person via email seems almost intrusive, since she doubts casual commenters really want email. To be honest, she sort of imagined she was typing into a void here, and hadn’t thought she’d have anyone to reply to beyond the people she already knows, who can use the telephone (or show up on the doorstep) when they want to talk. Thank you, though, to those of you who did take the time to comment!

Speaking of shopping, is this not adorable? No, Miss Verity is not the one selling the dress, and she isn’t bidding on it, either, as it wouldn’t fit her. But it’s very pretty, so she thought you might enjoy seeing it.

Please don’t misunderstand: Miss Verity does, goodness knows, have plenty of intellect-light moments of her own; she does own, and take pleasure in, a number of things; she has nothing against faith, and usually prefers the company and writings of people who have some kind of interior life.

But femininity can’t be reduced to shopping, surely, no matter how pretty the items offered for sale? And frankly, Miss Verity finds “celebrity” gossip distinctly unfeminine.

Also distinctly unfeminine: strident flouting of one’s religion in that horrid, pushy, “I know the mind of God, and here’s how he told me to tell you to dress” way. There’s nothing particularly modest about presuming to have detailed access to the inner workings of the Almighty, and Miss Verity wonders a little about the sort of people who think that judging others on their clothes is an appropriate expression of piety. (And Miss Verity seldom lets the public see her ankles, so you can skip right on past the part where you start implying things about her wardrobe, thank you very much.*)

Is Miss Verity the last person on the planet who was raised to think that religion is too personal and sacred a thing to be debased by constantly talking about one’s faith instead of quietly, and without fanfare, living it? She cannot possibly be. She dearly wishes she could find the blogs of some others, though.

*Miss Verity will also just state, for the record, that the sort of men who think the sight of female flesh is a temptation, and that women need to remove said temptation from their path, ought not to be let out in public until they’ve acquired a more robust flavour of “personal responsibility.”

She also has bags of organic black earth and cedar chips, and will be spending the afternoon weeding. Somehow, the more dire the news regarding global warming, oil prices, and food shortages, the more time Miss Verity finds herself spending in the garden. It’s very calming. For one thing, there’s no television out there.

She sees she’s not the only one to have made this particular leap, either, and urges you to check out Revive the Victory Garden. It may not actually inspire you to start gardening, but it’s soothing reading nonetheless.

Miss Verity also recently discovered a podcast she rather liked, called An Old-Fashioned Girl (named after a book she also rather likes); said podcast is now, alas, defunct, and their wordpress page appears to be as well. It wasn’t exactly what Miss Verity wanted–slightly too clothes-oriented, for one thing–but it was sweetly feminine and pleasant to listen to, and she’s sorry it ended. Miss Verity frequently has this experience, of discovering things that slightly interest or suit her only to find that they’ve vanished into the aether.

But since she has not, she can only admire the artistry of others. This one, for instance: without coming out and actually saying so, it manages to hint that amongst the pleasures of Service Life one will learn a standard of grooming (and possibly make-up) that will put most actual women in the shade. Oh, yes, and there will be sports–or gorgeous sporting outfits, anyway, which is the main thing.