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Show Sophistication Is Going Out Youth Doffing the Soiled Mantle of Those Embittered by Disappointment A COLLEGE DEAN said recent-ly recent-ly that being sophisticated is going out of fashion. Can it be true that the craze for sophistication to appear blase, to seem worldly wise, to know it all, to be hard-boiled and contemptuous con-temptuous of the simple things can it be true that modern youth Is through with it? And why? Is the advent of old fashioned hats and ruffles so influencing in-fluencing our point of view that modern youth now wants to throw sophistication into the discard? I think I know the reason, says a woman writer of international reputation. Modern Youth must have found out the real meaning of the word. Poring over their dictionaries they must have ac-cidently ac-cidently bumped into the derivation deriva-tion of "sophisticated." For "sophisticated" means adulterated. Look it up and see if it doesn't! And come to .think of it, . it couldn't have a better name. If the wisest of us had tried to put a fitting label on that loss of youth's natural and beautiful freshness if a genius hao tried to express that warping of standards, stand-ards, that tainting of taste, that souring of outlook, that premature aging of all the sensibilities he could have manufactured no better word than "sophisticated." For sophistication is an adulter- ation of viewpoint, of judgment, of taste by the taint of frustration, frustra-tion, the bitterness of disillusionment, disillusion-ment, the poison of disappointment, disappoint-ment, the dregs of the cup of poor experience. True, life is not all beauty or joy or perfection. Neither is it all bitter or sour or wrong. One of the most powerful weapons weap-ons in the hands of yout'.- is its freshness, its faith to write on its own slate only beauty and perfection. And when youth prematurely pre-maturely dons the soiled and shabby mantle of those who have known disappointment and failure, fail-ure, it does right to call this by the name "sophistication" a synonym of adulteration. Bell Syndicate. WNU Service. |