I've been collecting dozens -- no, make that hundreds -- of images as part of my research and I want to share them with you all, because they are fun, thought-provoking and even astonishing.

They are all here on my new Tumblr, Gender Mystique. Enjoy!

The concept of age compression, or kids getting older younger (KGOY), has been controversial for years. I just caught an example of this from the Sears catalogs in the late 1960s and early 1970s. On the left, you see an image of the Junior section of their spring 1967 catalog, which features popular model Colleen Corby (born in1947) in an outfit that in style and sizing is aimed at young women in the high school-college age range. In short, for younger women about her age. In 1970 Sears introduced their young teens line called "The Lemon Frog Shop",  sizes 6J to 18J, and described as perfect for girls from 11 to 14 years of age. Who do we see? Why, there's Colleen Corby at the far left, now in her early 20s. Colby was a popular model for girls about her age in the 1960s. What effect does her appearance have, when she is modeling clothing for girls 10 years younger?

Everyone who knows fashion has heard of Carnaby Street, the crucible of youth style during the "Youth Quake" of the 1960s. But how about King's Road in Chelsea, which Rodney Bennett-England dubbed "the perfect microcosm of contemporary British male fashion"? 

In 1968, that bastion of American middle-brow style, debuted its King's Road collection for young men. It's not Chelsea, but it will do. The King's Road fashions are pretty much the high water mark of the flood of "peacock styles" in mainstream fashion. These examples of "total color harmony" are from the spring, 1970 catalog. More to come, I promise!

And here is a TV ad from 1973. Football stars wear them, so you know they are manly!

Need to get your own? There's Ebay. 

Men's fashions of the late sixties are a fascinating mix of dandyism and exotic cultural appropriation. (Think of the Sgt. Pepper album cover.) How wonderful for posterity that fashion journalist Rodney Bennett-England decided to capture the moment in Dress Optional: The Revolution in Menswear (Dufour, 1968, now lamentably out of print). Sir Mark Palmer, who dropped out of the upper class to travel in a caravan with various pop stars and dress in Druid robes, offers a succinct explanation of the appeal of the hippie culture:

"It is not escapism leaving a bad scene to start a new one."

It strikes me that the vivid, revolutionary nature of men's clothing in this period is evidence that the time was ripe for a rejection of the "masculine mystique" along the same lines of second wave feminism. Instead, men got a brief escape into an alternate life before John T. Molloy rang the closing bell with Dress for Success in 1975. I think this parallels the short history of the "American costume" (aka the Bloomer costume) for women at the very beginning of the feminist movement. Which means there's always hope for men's liberation.