The Kangaroo Walk Explained

The “kangaroo walk” this mode of pedestrianism has already been dubbed by the women who do not admire and adopt it. The sliding and yet plunging manner in which the strides are taken gives to this name a decided character of suitability. But the new walk, however striking and fashionable it may be, will not do for all occasions.

HAVE YOU SEEN THE KANGAROO WALK?

It is queer enough upon the boulevards, but how would it be in a ballroom? And how about wedding processions and figures in the cotillion? Besides, while bearable and in some sort of keeping with heavy, man-tailored, short skirts, stiff-necked dressings, and wide-brimmed felt hats, it could not be considered at all in connection with the trailing gowns, beautifully sweetly feminine hats and bonnets to prevail during the coming season. What then? 

The "woman who walks" is very much in evidence in Los Angeles. But she does not walk at all as have done her predecessors of other pedestrian seasons. A new walk has made its appearance, and now up Spring Street it is rampant, it is by no means unknown upon Main Street. The new walk is as startling as it is unique and — peculiar. 

The walk and carriage of the fashionable woman has been really a thing of beauty for some years past. The most commendable style of walking of late years has been based upon Delsarte principles — head well up, chest out, abdomen held well back, back quite deeply indented. The Delsarte teachers and devotees were responsible for its introduction into America and the" polite world. Once introduced, the Delsarte carriage — being the proper and hygienic pose of the human body into the bargain—became almost universal.    

That it was a healthful and becoming mode of locomotion cannot be doubted. Now comes the new form of pedestrianism. It owes nothing to Delsarte or the physical culture principles. It seems to be based rather upon a desire to see to what lengths the old statement that walking, for human beings is really a series of forward tumbles with accompanying and subsequent recoveries, can be carried without resulting in dire disaster. 

The body and limbs are all held stiffly, the head — the chin particularly — is poked forward in a decidedly ungraceful and unbecoming manner, the back is bent stiffly from the waist, and the arms hang loosely and lifeless. With each forward step— and each step is a long, quick, hurrying stride—the arms swing stiffly out and back again, as though hung on pivots at the shoulders. The eyes are usually directed toward the ground or straight ahead, and the whole appearance is that of a Dutch doll unexepctedly endowed with the power of motion and in a great hurry to get back to the dollshop and exhibit

A clever and merry woman says that she believes the new walk is the direct result of the vain and fruitless efforts which women for so long made to correct and coerce the natural and innate wickedness and depravity of the short walking skirts which have become so indispensable to woman. These skirts, as every woman knows, will "sag" at the back and "hike" up in the front, no matter how good the tailor who fashioned them, how careful, graceful and stylish the wearer, and how expensive the materials from which they were constructed. 

The witty woman who claims to have invented this reason for the new walk, says that it was undoubtedly evolved by some poor feminine who had been driven to desperation and despair, almost to lunacy, by the altogether abominable conduct of a succession of these skirts. Bankrupt, despairing, at her wit's end, she decided to tip forward as she walked, thus bringing the edge of the skirt she was wearing into something like a right line. 

While this explanation of this new walk is not vouched for, it is the only one which has yet appeared, and it certainly bears with it an atmosphere of that "sweet reasonableness" which is conspicuous by its absence from the new walk itself. 

The "kangaroo walk" this mode of pedestrianism has already been dubbed by the women who do not admire and adopt it. The sliding and yet plunging manner in which the strides are taken gives to this name a decided character of suitability. But the new walk, however striking and fashionable it may be, will not do for all occasions. 

It is queer enough upon the boulevards, but how would it be in a ballroom? And how about wedding processions and figures in the cotillion? Besides, while bearable and in some sort of keeping with heavy, man-tailored, short skirts, stiff-necked dressings, and wide-brimmed felt hats, it could not be considered at all in connection with the trailing gowns, beautifully sweetly feminine hats and bonnets to prevail during the coming season. What then? 

Some provision must be made for the girls and women who cannot or will not adopt this style of carriage and locomotion, so still an advantage may be noticed in swelldom at present. The walk, or carriage has been termed, not inaptly the "religious walk." because it goes so well with the gentle, demure and sweetly serious appearance and expression which the fashionable woman cultivates upon certain occasions. 

It "looks lovely," to be appropriately feminine, when entering or leaving church, and it is "just too beautiful for anything" in the case of a wedding procession. The girl who can "do" the "religious walk" charmingly is sure of a certain amount of belledom wherever she may be. And for entering a crowded drawing-room or clubroom, for promenading at the opera, or between dances at a ball, there is nothing like it. 

The Delsarte devotee usually carried something in her hands when she went a-walking. Whatever it was, umbrella, golf stick, pocketbook, roll of music, it was so held as to accentuate the long, slender, straight, and slightly forward-tipping line of the figure. The girl with the kangaroo method of locomotion generally discards umbrellas and "small traps" of every kind. Her hands are usually clinched in decidedly enough. 

The Delsarte girl loved to wear her hat straight on her head, a la the sailor hat so beloved of the dear, impossible Gibson girl. The kangaroo maiden pulls her soft felt almost down to her eyebrows or pushes the round golf cap which replaces it almost back to her crown. The girl with the "religious walk" has taken points from both of them. She has, in fact, seized upon many of their distinguishing chnricteristics and transmuted them to uses of her own—with a difference. The mouth of the Delsarte girl was a delicious thing of sweet curves, modified by a slight degree of determination.- Los Angeles Herald, 1901

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Etiquette and a Bare Era of Arms

“Because a woman's arms must be kept well within the picture and backed against the person, it does not follow that she should move her arms, as most women do, only from the elbows. No gesture could be worse possibly. It expresses the little, the petty, the ungracious, the over anxious to enter the camp of the 400. It stamps a woman at once as nervous and awkward, an overgrown school girl.” —
— The most common image exhibited on the cover of the popular Delineator’s Women’s Magazine throughout the 1890’s, was a bare-armed woman reclining in Grecian style gown. Etiquipedia has no idea whether she was “over anxious to enter the camp of the 400.”
  — Photo from the Etiquipedia private photo library

We are going to have an era of arms. In a general way, arms are things we have with us always, but the chances we are we shall see more of them. The long glove has moderated its ambition: it stops as soon as it is turned the corner of the elbow. One woman in twenty has a prettily modeled elbow and she, you may be sure, does not cover it's dimples with either glove or sleeve. Glove etiquette seems to be a little more liberal than it was before we wore the Greek gown. There are daring spirits who regard its classic folds as a warrant for baring the arm from the finger-tip to shoulder. There are even those who maintain that by wearing the Récamier dress, the same dispensation from gloves may be obtained. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, for example, when she puts on a short wasted white silk is never shy about exposing her long, rounded arms.

The smoke of the fight about the decollete bodice has never enveloped the arm. Annie Jenness Miller says that if a woman's arm is pretty she should give its shapeliness frankly to the world; if it is not pretty she should study sleeves. The ideal arm has a beauty of wholesome, almost a pastoral order; it bears showing. It is clear skinned and rounded, and there is a gracious dimple just at the side of the elbow. The skin is soft, but the flesh is firm. Beneath it's smooth contour it is instinct with the strength that supports a tired child. It is a blemish if the lines are so full as to suggest the seraglio rather than the green fields.

Women who know anything about arms, have thrown their bracelets away. It is a mistaken policy to call attention to a poor arm, and a good one is never so beautiful as when naked. One often sees the value of a wrist absolutely destroyed by a bangle. Gloved or ungloved, sleeved or unsleeved, braceleted or without jewels, the arm grows in importance every day. Genevieve Stebbins Thompson and Madame Albertti and Henrietta Crane Russell and Mabel Jenness and the rest of the esthetes and physical culturists and Delsarteans have been teaching us all winter to pose, and the pity is we begin to “make” our arms before we have taken our degrees. The results are commonly ridiculous or harassing.

The arms of the woman who is not naturally graceful always look stiff and harsh as they lie in her lap motionless. If she is not bitten with any of the artistic fads, she makes an awkward hoop of them, with fingers interlaced. If she has been doing a little amateurish studying of classical collections, she extends them or lets them hang at full length, unflexed in hard, straight lines. The first piece of advice which a well-wisher would give such a woman would be that she allow both arms to fall in free, easy positions, slightly relaxed at the elbows or with the hand drooping a little at the wrist, but she should not allow her left arm to know what her right arm is doing. One ought usually take a somewhat different position from the other, else you overdo the bilateral and look like a jointed doll.

But it is when a woman moves that real difficulties arise. Many a girl makes capital out of handsome arms when she throws them into relief on the tennis ground, flaps like a seal if she shakes hands in a drawing room. The difference is partly in the environment; partly, sometimes in the gown. There's no getting a graceful motion if your dress has a French-fit at the shoulder seams. Most women think there's a fine reserve in restrained gesticulation, and it is true that the woman does not exist who can attitudinize in private life without considerable danger of making herself ridiculous. 

It is commonly assumed that the effect has been calculated if a pretty girl indulges in movement as charming and natural as that of raising her arms to adjust her hair. But because a woman's arms must be kept well within the picture and backed against the person, it does not follow that she should move her arms, as most women do, only from the elbows. No gesture could be worse possibly. It expresses the little, the petty, the ungracious, the over anxious to enter the camp of the 400. It stamps a woman at once as nervous and awkward, an overgrown school girl. Every dignified arm motion starts from the shoulder. In this way only can one get curve or swing. Elbow motion is mechanical, all angles.

You can tell much about a woman by the way in which she shakes hands. The pump-handle motion, fashionable this past winter, was distinctly vulgar, almost as much so as the present squaring of the shoulders, extensions of the elbows and swaggering clutch of the pocket which is sold to one girl in every four with her best spring jacket. Many a woman who is gracefully cordial with an intimate, falls back on a marionette-like wagging from the elbow if called upon to say, “How do you do?” to an important person of whom she stands somewhat in awe. The giving of the hand must be a whole arm motion, but the arm should not be extended full length, except in impulsive welcome; it may be kept rather near the body and the hand allowed to fall low. —San Francisco Call, 1890

Glove etiquette seems to be a little more liberal than it was before we wore the Greek gown. There are daring spirits who regard its classic folds as a warrant for baring the arm from the finger-tip to shoulder. There are even those who maintain that by wearing the Récamier dress, the same dispensation from gloves may be obtained. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, for example, when she puts on a short wasted white silk is never shy about exposing her long, rounded arms.   
— A public domain image of a Récamier dress in Portrait of Madame Récamier by Jacques Louis David, 1800

Etiquette. Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia