There’s something brave and touching about game girls of all ages keeping themselves smart in hard times - one thinks of those wonderful women during World War II drawing stocking seams in eyebrow pencil up the back of legs stained with gravy browning because nylons were so hard to get hold of.

Burchill is admiring a particular kind of everyday resilience: women’s determination to maintain style and self-presentation even when circumstances are harsh. By invoking wartime Britain—when nylon stockings were scarce—she frames “keeping themselves smart” not as vanity but as courage and morale-building ingenuity. The image of drawing a stocking seam with eyebrow pencil and tinting legs with kitchen browning highlights improvisation under rationing, and suggests solidarity across generations (“girls of all ages”). The quote also gestures toward the emotional power of small rituals: looking put-together becomes a way to assert dignity, normality, and agency when larger forces (war, austerity) constrain life.