But in thus becoming directed only against sight, and not against action, the gestures of modesty are at once free to become merely those of coquetry.  When there is no real danger of offensive action, there is no need for more than playful defence, and no serious anxiety should that defence be taken as a disguised invitation.  Thus the road is at once fully open toward the most civilized manifestations of the comedy of courtship.

In the same way the social fear of arousing disgust combines easily and perfectly with any new development in the invention of ornament or clothing as sexual lures.  Even among the most civilized races it has often been noted that the fashion of feminine garments (as also sometimes the use of scents) has the double object of concealing and attracting.  It is so with the little apron of the young savage belle.  The heightening of the attraction is, indeed, a logical outcome of the fear of evoking disgust.

It is possible, as some ethnographists have observed,[48] that intercrural cords and other primitive garments have a physical ground, inasmuch as they protect the most sensitive and unprotected part of the body, especially in women.  We may note in this connection the significant remarks of K. von den Steinen, who argues that among Brazilian tribes the object of the uluri, etc., is to obtain a maximum of protection for the mucous membrane with a minimum of concealment.  Among the Eskimo, as Nansen noted, the corresponding intercrural cord is so thin as to be often practically invisible; this may be noted, I may add, in the excellent photographs of Eskimo women given by Holm.

But it is evident that, in the beginning, protection is to little or no extent the motive for attaching foreign substances to the body.  Thus the tribes of Central Australia wear no clothes, although they often suffer from the cold.  But, in addition to armlets, neck-bands and head-bands, they have string or hair girdles, with, for the women, a very small apron and, for the men, a pubic tassel.  The latter does not conceal the organs, being no larger than a coin, and often brilliantly coated with white pipeclay, especially during the progress of corrobborees, when a large number of men and women meet together; it serves the purpose of drawing attention to the organs.[49] When Forster visited the unspoilt islanders of the Pacific early in the eighteenth century, he tells us that, though they wore no clothes, they found it necessary to cover themselves with various ornaments, especially on, the sexual parts.  “But though their males,” he remarks, “were to all appearances equally anxious in this respect with their females, this part of their dress served only to make that more conspicuous which it intended to hide."[50] He adds the significant remark that “these ideas of decency and modesty are only observed at the age of sexual maturity,” just as in Central Australia women may only wear aprons after the initiation of puberty.