The only thing that has been taught successfully to women is to wear becomingly the fig-leaf they received from their first mother. Everything that is said and repeated for the first eighteen or twenty years of a woman's life is reduced to this: "My daughter, take care of your fig-leaf;" "your fig-leaf becomes you"; "your fig-leaf does not become you."

A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness (1886)