Continued

[susandennis]

Let's talk clothes. Girls were wore dresses to school. To church. To the doctor's office. To every-fucking-where except the back yard.

In elementary school we had 45 minutes to an hour of recess every day. They'd send us outside to play. Not really organized play, just run around and try to stay alive. The school yard was part dirt, part asphalt. There were some jungle gyms and swings. Some balls and jump ropes.

Because of the dresses, girls were not allowed on the jungle gyms. Then some girl was in the swings and went too high (I saw London, I saw France, I saw xxxx's underpants.) and then girls were not allowed on the swings. The boys could do whatever they wanted. It wasn't horrible, but it wasn't fair. We could play ball - dodge ball, Red Rover and we could jump rope and play hop scotch. But, so could the boys do all of that.

Once a year, we had Field Day. It was a day of running and jumping and planned outdoor track event type stuff. Girls were allowed to wear pants. Years after I left school, if I saw kids at a bus stop and the girls were wearing pants, I used to think 'oh they must be having Field Day!'

In the winter, it often would get pretty chilly. My Mom (and most everyone else's) made me wear pants under my dress. (Tights, back then, were for really expensive and for ballerinas only.) I did not have a lot of fashion sense as a kid but even I knew that pants under my dress was a stupid look. I had taken to walking an extra half mile to school in order to swing by Lemon's house and walk to school with her. Her house had this great secret space under the front steps where we kept important stuff (stories we wrote, treasures we found, stuff like that). So on cold days when moms laid down the pants requirement, we'd stop at our hiding place, shed them and stuff them under those steps. Then on the way home, we'd stop there first, put them back on and then go home.

EDIT: Do be sure and read hopefulspirit's tale of her grandfather and wearing skirts to school!!

When we got home from school every day, we had to change out of our school clothes into our play clothes before we were allowed to do anything else. So the boys always had a head start on after school play, because they didn't have to change anything. Stupid boys.

To Be Continued

Comments

[hopefulspirit.livejournal.com]

I remember my Mom talking about this, how girls had to wear dresses every day to school. One time they were having a bad blizzard and she'd put on her pants but forgot to put her skirt on over them and when she got to school they tried to send her home. She wouldn't go, she'd have had to walk home, so they called her house and her stepdad happened to have just walked in the door and answered the phone. He informed them he didn't have time to bring clothes to the school, and if they tried to make her walk back home in -30 below zero temps because of a fucking skirt, they should expect to pay my Mom's doctor bill for any illness she might come down with. As you can imagine, that didn't go over well. lol They wouldn't let my Mom go back to class though, she had to sit in the office all day, and when her stepdad found out he was livid. He went to the school the next day and jumped all over the principal over it, after which time they changed the dress code to state that during the winter if the wind was over however many MPH and/or the temperature was below zero, girls would be allowed to wear pants to school.

It's funny to think about this. My Mom talked about how they were expected to dress when I was in grade school and I didn't think a lot about it, of course, but when I started high school Mom went with me to the freshman orientation, and a few of the teachers she'd had as a student there were still teaching. One was her senior English teacher and he asked her how my grandpa was doing, and then told me how my grandfather made quite an impression on him when he walked into the school office and heard my grandpa tell the principal to try walking home from school in a skirt in the middle of a blizzard and see how he likes it. Grandpa has quite a reputation at that school. LOL

Sorry to ramble, reading your post just instantly reminded me of this!

[susandennis]

That is the best skirts of school story EVER!! I just added it to the entry. I love your grandfather!

[maju01.livejournal.com]

We had to wear dresses or skirts to school too, but we girls always tucked our skirts into the leg elastic of our underwear when we wanted to climb on the monkey bars/jungle gym or do anything which might show our underwear.

Some of my peers wore pants or shorts when they weren't at school, but my father firmly believed that girls should only wear dresses, so that's what my sisters and I wore at all times, including when doing the roughest farm work. (We did have separate clothes for school and home wear.) I remember the feeling of liberation when I was finally allowed to wear shorts in my early teens.

[sweetmeow]

Oh - - I remember the skirt / dress thing well. Through 12th grade, there could be no pants in school! Even when I entered college (fall of '67) -- Lycoming College - a Methodist affiliated school - we had to wear skirts for both lunch and dinner, which kind of made it so that's what we wore all day, every day, except for Saturday. Pants could only be worn for breakfasts and all day Saturday. Hosiery and dress shoes were required for dinner. (Knee socks - which were in fashion then - were permitted for lunches). But - that was the era of change. By the time I was a junior, jeans and t-shirts were the norm for all occasions. I think it was in the early 70s when the pants restrictions were slowly lifted in elementary and secondary schools, too.

One thing I don't remember was wearing pants under my skirt. I never took the bus all the years I was in school, and walked to school in all kinds of cold (and rainy) weather. I can remember arriving in school and could NOT feel my knees, because they were numb from cold. Then, as I warmed up, they itched horribly! It's amazing I didn't get frost bite.

I never thought about how girls were restricted from activities because of those skirts. But -- you're right - we didn't play on the monkey bars, though I do remember being on swings - - and going high! These restrictions were more accepted, and never questioned back then. Back then, I'm not sure I cared to do what boys did, because they didn't like the girls anyway -- teased and mocked us if we tried to play with them -- so who wanted hang out in that kind of humiliation? It never occurred to me that this was a form of stratification, and our clothing requirements contributed to it.

Shoes were another interesting (boring) phenomenon. I was only allowed three pair: school shoes -- always tie shoes (saddle shoes), sneakers - usually Keds or PF Flyers (after school and summer shoes) and black patent leather Sunday shoes. Funky shoes - flip flops, etc. the kids wear now just didn't happen!

[susandennis]

ha! Yep. School shoes, play shoes and Sunday shoes.

New school shoes in August, new Sunday shoes at Easter and new play shoes when you toe broke through.

[sweetmeow]

EXACTLY!

You mention Easter. My parents were probably the only ones who didn't believe in getting all of us new Easter outfits each year. All that finery seemed -- wrong -- to them. (There's a bit of Mennonite in my background) I hated Easter morning when I'd see everyone but me with a new outfit. So - my new Sunday shoes were purchased in August like my school shoes - and new sneakers were purchased in June after school got out.

[rejectomorph]

At my high school, ca. 1960, it was widely rumored— though possibly it was just a school legend— that if she suspected a girl's full skirt (tight skirts were actually forbidden) might be too short, the girls vice principal, Miss Arzt, would make them kneel on the floor to make sure that the skirt's hem touched the floor all the way around. I never saw a girl being made to kneel, so I don't know if it was true or not, but the tale was repeated often enough.

Another supposed rule of hers was a ban on patent leather shoes, because boys might see a girl's underwear reflected in the shiny surface! I don't know if that was a real rule or not, either, but I don't recall ever having seen a girl at that school wearing patent leather shoes.

Miss Arzt was a diminutive, elderly woman with short gray hair but remarkable energy who walked rapidly around the school leaning forward at an alarming angle, so I always expected her to face-plant someday. The students were afraid of her, because she was fairly strict, and a formidable presence despite her small stature, but they also made many rude remarks about her (out of range of any adult's hearing, of course.)

I had occasion to talk to her a couple of times for the school newspaper, and actually found her quite pleasant in a one-on-one situation. I wouldn't have wanted to get on her bad side, though. She was certainly more intimidating than either the principal or the boy's vice principal.

[susandennis]

Oh yeah that kneeling thing was real. At least in North Carolina but, as you point out, not until the 60's. In elementary school, we didn't have tight skirts or any length issues.

Patent leather shoes weren't banned but they were for church so no one would have worn them anyway.

I'll be writing about my high school principal (the school wasn't big enough for a vice principal and it was all girls anyway). She was a force to match your Miss Arzt but not pleasant one-on-one or one on many.

[sweetmeow]

Where I grew up, Patent Leather shoes were banned in the Catholic schools for precisely the reason you said! I didn't go to one, but talked to others that had that rule. Sometimes the Catholic schools had social events where you would wear dressy shoes, and that's where the rule was enforced.

[meowmensteen]

Makes me feel less bad about my mom making me where corduroy pants when I was a kid. I hated wearing those things. They made so much noise when I walked to school.

[susandennis]

OMG corduroy pants ... THE WORST!

[badrobot68.livejournal.com]

Haha, I loved mine! I felt so fancy in them!

[zoefruitcake.livejournal.com]

We had strict school uniforms so it was skirt in winter and dress in summer regardless of weather. For 'games' (physical education) I hated the really short skirts we had to wear as they were embarrassing for the larger girl

[gfrancie.livejournal.com]

I remember my mom telling me how it was a super big deal when she was in 9th or 10th grade when the dress code changed and girls could wear trousers to school. It was total freedom. She said in elementary school you could wear trousers under your skirt/dress if it was cold out, and then take them off once you got to school. But they didn't restrict what the girls could do on the playground. (She grew up in Edmonds -so a slightly different cultural climate from the south.)

My Mother in law was telling my kids about school uniforms when she was a girl. Obviously a dress or skirt. But they had super specific uniforms at certain times of the year. Even the shoes and socks were a specific brand, and they had to wear a hat. (straw in spring/summer, felt in autumn/winter) And you HAD to wear it to and from school. Adults would call the school and tell on children they spotted who weren't wearing their hats. (they would also tell on children who were seen eating on the street in their uniform.)

[rsc.livejournal.com]

My recollection is that my high school required girls to wear skirts unless the temperature was over 90 (which pretty much never happened during the school year) or below 19.

I'm pretty sure we boys were not allowed to wear jeans to school.

[susandennis]

Oh jeans! Jeans were farmer's clothes that no one wore until 1966 (the Summer before my junior year in high school) when, all of a sudden, they were HOT and only for hippies. But, not allowed anywhere.

[rsc.livejournal.com]

And, of course, we mostly called them dungarees. For us city kids, they were "play clothes".

A further note on our high school dress code -- and this is something I only heard about second-hand, so I may have some of the details wrong: A year or two after I graduated (class of '64) the principal died and was replaced by one of the most senior faculty members -- an English teacher whom I rather liked, but was somewhat old-school. Apparently he tried to introduce a rule that senior (or maybe junior and senior?) boys had to wear sports jackets in school. In the mid-to-late 1960s. God only knows what he was thinking.

[susandennis]

Yes, dungarees... ha, hadn't heard that in years.