  We give a proof of an unpublished result of Thurston showing that given any
hyperbolic metric on a surface of finite type with nonempty boundary, there
exists another hyperbolic metric on the same surface for which the lengths of
all simple closed geodesics are shorter. (This is not possible for surfaces of
finite type with empty boundary.) Furthermore, we show that we can do the
shortening in such a way that it is bounded below by a positive constant. This
improves a recent result obtained by Parlier in [2]. We include this result in
a discussion of the weak metric theory of the Teichm\"uller space of surfaces
with nonempty boundary.
