Sometimes I'll play a game of tag

neile tagged me, so I'm playing.

Here are your rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences here.
5. Put the meme and answer in your journal, tag five people and the madness continues.

Nearest book, to my left: Beading on Fabric: Encyclopedia of Bead Stitch Techniques, by Larkin Jean Van Horn. Book ends on page 120, the tail end of the index.

Okay, next closest book, to my right: Sex and Suits: The Evolution of Modern Dress, by Anne Hollander.

"Nobody forthrightly defended the erotic and imaginative virtues of fashion itself except for male authors in France -- Balzac, a great creator of women in the first half of the centruy, was particularly eloguent about the poetic force of feminine finery; and indeed no less so about masculine elegance. So were Stendhal and Baudelaire.

"But early feminist objections in England and America were never made to fashion as a male conspiracy, only to the male restriction of female minds that confined women to such allegedly unwholesome preoccupations. Among reformers, feminine fashion itself was rather seen as feminine folly in material form, female weakness made manifest. Women, after all, were making the hats and dresses as well as wearing them."

I'll tag wild_irises, libertango, pecunium, jinasphinx (if the baby's napping), and webbob. I tell the grandchildren that I only play walk-tag, not running-tag. Online tag with words is a lot more like walk-tag than running-tag.