My Grandma never wore pants

[susandennis]

Turns out it is spring break for Seattle schools and that's why everything is relatively people-free. Since getting home from the pool was not going to be a problem anyway, I decided to go to the big Safeway (which takes longer to get to) where I scored on several items that I was hoping they had (that the other Safeway doesn't) - like already sliced radishes and way better cheese selection and other good stuff. And then, I remembered to get gas! AND there's a Safeway gas right there. So I got cheap gas as I had built up Safeway gas point. I was proud.

As I was getting into my car, I watched a Mom and her probably 8 year old daughter get out of theirs and head into the store. The Mom was a regular looking Mom in jeans and I was struck, once again, by how very different the world of people born in this century is from the world I grew up in. I was in my 40s before I ever saw my own Mom in jeans.

Oh she wasn't a fancy dresser. She wore shorts and, most humiliating for me, she wore a lot of tennis dresses. She played tennis every single day except when it snowed. (She had been Oklahoma State Champion in college and played until her knees finally turned on her at age 75.) And this was when tennis = white and there was NO NO NO variation (lord, I do remember the outrage and vitriol when tennis players added colored trim to the white pants under their white dresses). She always had on those really embarrassing tennis dresses as she dropped me off here and there which was bad enough but sometimes she even came into school to bring me something on the way to the courts and everyone saw her. OMG (we didn't have OMG back then but we sure should have).

When she wasn't wearing shorts or those tennis dresses, she wore what were called house dresses. She always word a dress to the grocery and a fancier dress and stockings to do other shopping. I remember when Winston-Salem got its first shopping center. She was gleeful and explained "Now I can go buy thread or even bread in my Bermuda shorts!!!" Long after I left home, she got a pair of jeans. And wore them pretty regularly and it always seemed incongruous to me.

Both my grandmothers lived until I was an adult. I never ever saw either of them in pants of any kind - short or long - and would have been shocked if I had. Even as I type this right now, I try to add tasteful, tailored nice looking pants to my memory of how they looked and it just won't work.

When I went to college in 1967, girls were not allowed to wear pants except on weekends. That changed, I think, by at least my junior year or maybe even sophomore. But still, even then jeans were still not yet as unremarkable and common.

Different times, different styles. Funny to think that people approaching middle age today won't have any memory of them. And I'm guessing my Mom thought the same thing about her century. I am not sorry I don't have first hand memory of that dust bowl!

Comments

[badrobot68.livejournal.com]

My Grandma never wore shorts or pants. Only dresses. And she didn't own very many of them, so she basically looked exactly the same to me for 30+ years!

[susandennis]

I get that. My good grandma didn't won a lot of dresses and I can remember most of them specifically. I can't remember many (if any) of my mom's specific clothes outside of those damn tennis dresses.

[badrobot68.livejournal.com]

I can remember 3 dresses. One was light pink with little white flowers. One was light blue & white checkered. One was a lavender color, possibly with flowers on it as well.

[galebird.livejournal.com]

My nana, born in 1921, never wore jeans or shorts (the latter is assumed, I have no verifiable proof if she ever did - the former I definitely know to be true). She wore slacks if she wore pants. When she had to go out somewhere she frequently looked like the Queen of England did about 15 years ago. Same hairdo, same lipstick, same sense of style... my Nana just had more of a budget to keep to than the Queen. ;) It was at my high school graduation that she wore sneakers for the first time - a fine pair of simple Keds. Good thing, too, since we accidentally marched her straight through the gay pride parade on the way to dinner.

[jwg.livejournal.com]

Until the last few years of her life, my mother would not go out (city of country) without wearing a hat. My father, too. I was reminded of this when we went to the San Francisco Railroad Museum the other day and saw a video from ~1906 (a camera fastened to the front of a cable car) and not a single person was not wearing a hat.

Once I offered to lend my mother a light jacket and and she said she couldn't wear it since it buttoned from the wrong side.

[susandennis]

Love that. All of it.

It reminded me of my Grandpa's hat. Every Sunday, after church, they would go to the cafeteria (owned by a fellow decon) for lunch and nearly every single Sunday he would forget his hat OR grab someone else's instead. Grandpa's Hat On Sunday was true thing. I hadn't thought about that in years. Thanks!

[ayebydan]

My grandma never wore trousers or jeans or such either other than during the second world war when she was a teenager in a gas mask making factory. In fact, she never wore much of anything. She only ever had a few dresses and a few 'good outfits' and it became awkward. She wore the same outfit to my aunt, uncle and my mum's two weddings. Over three decades. And she'd wear everything too long. A week in a skirt is not ok when it is covered in stains from making soup. >__<.

[susandennis]

wouldn't our grandmothers be shocked to see us today? i know mine would!

[ellettra.livejournal.com]

Not being able to wear PANTS blows my MIND. As recently as the 60s!!!

[susandennis]

Looking back now, I'm with ya. BUT, I gotta say that on the east coast in that time, we didn't really even think about it.

In elementary school, we used to have Field Day once a year. We'd spend the day outside running and jumping and stuff and we were allowed to wear pants on that day only.

For years and years, probably until my 40's whenever I'd see girls waiting for a school bus in pants, I'd think 'Oh, it must be their Field Day'...