Category: 1960s

Advice to young secretaries, 1964

11/3/2016

I am tempted to post this without comment, but decided against it. This was my world as a young woman. Not just for secretaries, but for just about any woman seeking employment. The author, Ruth Millett, was not particularly conservative; she made her reputation early in her career as an advocate for working mothers during World War II. The advice she dispenses here was what we heard from our mothers, teachers, and mentors, because it was just the way things were.

I have no doubt that Hillary Clinton heard this advice at least as much as I did. Keep this in mind the next time you hear someone complain about "her voice, her clothes, her smile".

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Learning to be Female: Puberty!

3/5/2016

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(From the very-much-in-progress Age Appropriate.)

Here comes puberty.

The truly odd thing is that my life from about 10 to 14 is relatively undocumented by my otherwise shutterbug father. So I have a few pictures, but not what I would like for this project.

Here's what I remember:

1960-61

First bra in late fifth grade or early sixth grade. It was one of those silly knit "grow bras" and I had already outgrown it. In sixth grade (1960-61) I went from one end of the gym line to the other, having grown six inches. I was no longer a short, skinny girl who loved to run and jump rope. Bouncing boobs were too embarrassing. My posture deteriorated. I lived in terror of boys snapping my bra strap, and was sure everyone was staring at me.

Summer of 1961

My first nylons, shaving my legs, my first purse, and first and only subteen dress. By that fall I was 5' 9" and wearing a misses 14. That summer a lifeguard flirted with me because he thought I was in high school, which I found funny and flattering.

Fall, 1961 (7th grade)

Trying to figure out what to wear was a constant puzzle. I outgrew girls' clothes so fast, and went right into misses sizes. I experimented with nail polish, make-up, and new hairstyles but had trouble getting the hang of it.

Maybe it is a good thing there aren't more pictures.

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Special thanks to Rick Santorum

5/28/2015

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So Rick Santorum is in the 2016 race for the GOP nomination for President. Senator Santorum occupies a very special place in my heart, along with New York Times columnist Charles Blow, because they switched on the connecting synapses in my brain just as I was really, really struggling with how to make sense of unisex fashion.

From the introduction to the book:

Who knew that the 2012 presidential campaign would turn into a 1960s flashback? For many of us, the moment of awakening was when Republican candidate Rick Santorum seemingly stepped out of a time machine and proclaimed his opposition not just to abortion rights but to birth control as well. The controversy began when columnist Charles Blow rediscovered Santorum’s 2008 speech to the Oxford Center for Religion and Public Life in Washington, including this comment the senator made during the question and answer period:

"You’re a liberal or a conservative in America if you think the 60s were a good thing or not. If the 60s was a good thing, you’re left. If you think it was a bad thing, you’re right. And the confusing thing for a lot of people that gets a lot of Americans is, when they think of the 60s, they don’t think of just the sexual revolution. But somehow or other--and they’ve been very, very, clever at doing this--they’ve been able to link, I think absolutely incorrectly, the sexual revolution with civil rights."

With all due respect to Senator Santorum, I do see connections between the sexual revolution and the civil rights movement, and his comments suggest that he does too, even if he believes they have been linked erroneously. In fact I venture to say that many of the issues in today’s culture wars--gay and transgender rights, gender equality, reproductive choice--center on the disputed territory of sexual norms and are argued in terms of civil rights and government authority to dictate morality. As a means of expressing sexual and gender identity, the fashions of the time revealed the cultural shifts set in motion by the women’s liberation movement and the sexual revolution. The countermovements and controversies over these changes are likewise visible, particularly in the scores of legal cases involving long hair on men: cases that explicitly enlisted the language of civil rights.

And with that, I was off to the races. Three years later, Santorum is back, and the culture wars are in full swing, with reproductive choice, dress codes, and LBGTQ rights filling the news. Just in time for three months of summer break and blogging time! Watch this space.

Welcome back, Rick!

Read the Charles Blow column.
Read Sen. Santorum's 2008 speech.

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"Take your Clothes off when you Dance"

9/19/2014

When I was struggling with the conclusion for Sex and Unisex, my life partner of over forty-five years (most of them legal) suggested aiming for Frank Zappa's "Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance", recorded in 1968 It's on "We're Only in it for the Money", the album with the parody Sgt. Pepper cover, and appears again on "Lumpy Gravy". Yes, it's also in the conclusion. Thanks, Jim.

It does pretty much sum up the countercultural reaction to establishment fascination with hair and clothes, but it also skewers the counterculture for ITS fascination with hair and clothes. Zappa's message still resonates with me.

Here's Frank's son Dweezil playing it in 2012. Stylistically updated, but the lyrics are timeless.

If you want to sing along:

There will come a time when everybody
Who is lonely will be free...
To sing & dance & love

There will come a time when every evil
That we know will be an evil...
That we can rise above

Who cares if hair is long or short
Or sprayed or partly grayed...
We know that hair ain't where it's at

(there will come a time when you won't
Even be ashamed if you are fat!)

Wah wah-wah wah

There will come a time when everybody
Who is lonely will be free...
To sing & dance & love (dance and love)

There will come a time when every evil
That we know will be an evil...
That we can rise above (rise above)

Who cares if you're so poor you can't afford
To buy a pair of mod a go-go stretch-elastic pants...
There will come a time when you can even
Take your clothes off when you dance

Read more: Frank Zappa - Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance Lyrics | MetroLyrics

Thanks, Frank. We miss you!

This day in hair history

9/9/2014

Yes, it was exactly fifty years ago today -- September 9, 1964, that George Leonard walked into Attleboro (MA) High School and made history. His was the first long-hair case to be litigated in court. In his honor, enjoy my original post on the topic.

Are slacks unhealthy for women?

8/15/2013

I can't resist sharing my favorite warning about the dangers of pants for women, from none other than physician Robert Bradley, author of the very-popular Husband-Coached Childbirth.

I strongly feel that the current rash of vaginal infections is related to women dressing in men's-style clothing. I'm an old square who thinks women look graceful and feminine in long skirts with lace and frills to accentuate their femininity. Pioneer women wore long skirts with no underclothes--at least for working--and had far fewer bladder infections than modern women who wear slacks, especially tight, rigid denims, and panty hose. In addition, the exercises of squatting and tailor sitting can be performed so much more easily in a large, loose skirt than in tight-fitting slacks.

This was a popular "science-based"argument in the 1960s and 70s for why women should not wear pants. (Strangely, it was not used to discourage us from wearing underpants!) Later studies found trousers innocent on all charges; instead the major culprits were nylon panties and pantyhose.

Unsex and "His 'n Hers"

8/12/2013

If you asked someone in the fashion industry, unisex was a fad that came and went in one year: 1968. For that brief moment, the fashion press hailed gender blending as the wave of the future, and department stores created special sections for unisex fashions. Most of these boutiques had closed by 1969. However, in the more mainstream realm of Sears, Roebuck catalogs and major sewing patterns, “his ‘n hers” clothing – mostly casual shirts, sweaters and outerwear – persisted through the late 1970s. The difference between avant-garde unisex and the later version is the distinction between boundary-defying designs, often modeled by androgynous-looking models, and a less-threatening variation, worn by attractive heterosexual couples.

Also: one more chapter to go! Huzzah!!!

"Because I said so." The opening shot in the culture wars.

8/10/2013

I am still drafting the context chapter of the book, and thankfully, it is beginning to make sense. Or at least I think it is, so I'll post a bit here are see what y'all think. Don't be shy!

This comes after a paragraph about the inability of sex researchers to take into account their own culturally-induced biases. I use the familiar metaphor of the fish trying to understand water, which is often used to describe the difficulties encountered when we try to examine our own culture.

Reformers, advocates and activists working to expand civil rights were essentially trying to change the dimensions of the fishbowl. The Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States of America offer definitions of human rights that initially promised more than they delivered to many people living within our borders. The civil rights movements in our history have been efforts to include people who had been excluded from the promise of “life, liberty and the pursuit if happiness” offered in 1776 and the guarantee of “equal protection under the law” added in 1868. This may seem heady, serious stuff for a book on fashion, but it was the civil rights movement that made clothing and hair into national, contentious issues. Much of the fashion controversies centered on issues of gender expression and gender equality, which raised different questions for women and men, and for adults and children.

Many of the initial questions were seemingly trivial. Why can’t girls wear slacks to school? Why must men always wear ties, which seem to serve no practical purpose? Why do so many dresses button or zip up the back? Why can’t a boy wear his hair long just like the Beatles? Why do I have to wear white gloves and a hat just to go shopping downtown? Why is it cute to be a tomboy but not a sissy? If these sound like children’s questions, maybe it’s because at first they were. I remember puzzling over these and many other rules when I was growing up. The answers were even more puzzling – and annoying! “That’s just the way it is.” “Because I said so.” Culture, and the authority of grownups. In the 1960s, the Baby boom generation started to question more and push back harder, along with some allies in older generations. They were aided and abetted by a consumer culture that may have been more interested in their buying power than in cultural and political change.

Girls' Dress Code, Illinois 1969

7/29/2013

I. Clothing

A. Blouses/skirts, sweaters/skirts, or sport type dresses shall be worn.1. Blouses, dresses, and sweaters must have armholes high enough to cover undergarments.

2. Extremely tight fitting clothing shall not be worn.

3. Skirts shall not be more than four inches (4") above the knee.

4. Midriffs, backless, shoulderless dresses are not acceptable. Spaghetti straps or tie straps are not to be worn. Blouses should be worn under low necked sweaters.

5. Blouses must be worn tucked in unless the blouse [**7] is designed to be worn outside the skirt as an over-blouse.

6. Play clothes, such as slacks, pedal pushers, shorts, Bermudas, leotards without a skirt, etc., are not acceptable wear unless specifically designated for special occasions.

II. Hair

A. Hair styles shall be neat, properly combed, appropriately arranged, and extreme styles avoided. Bangs are to be neat and short enough to show the eyebrows.1. Pincurls, clippies, rollers, or glitter may not be worn during school hours. Head scarves are not to be worn in classrooms.

III. Make-up

A. Make-up shall be applied sparingly and not to the point of attracting undue attention.1. Excessive jewelry is not appropriate for school wear.

IV. Shoes

A. Shoes should be appropriate for school wear. Roman type sandals or boots are not acceptable. Hosiery, anklets, or peds are to be worn for good health practices.

Hair-raising hero: George Leonard/Georgie Porgie

7/22/2013

Beginning in 1964, newspapers reported numerous instances of boys – some as young as 9 – being barred from school for having long hair. Most of these confrontations ended with a quick trim. In a parochial school in New Hampshire, the administrator loaded 18 students on a school bus and delivered them to a local barber. The first legal case involving hair was Leonard v. School Committee of Attleboro (Massachusetts), which began with the first day of classes on September 9, 1964 and went all the way to the state Supreme Court, which in December 1965 upheld the school’s right to dictate the appearance of students. Leonard, already a professional musician performing under the name Georgie Porgie, had argued that the school did not have a written dress code and that his long hair was vital to his career, but the court ruled that the principal had the authority to tell Leonard to get a haircut and to expel him when he refused. When he attended an Attleboro High School all-class reunion in 2013, he was greeted as a celebrity; to his classmates and the younger students at the school, he had been a hero. To some fans of freedom of expression, he still is; his entry at the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame website, claims, "every kid who sports long hair, pink hair or a shaved head, or wears a nose ring, a tattoo or makeup, owes his right to do so to” the Pawtucket-born Leonard.

Georgie Porgie and his band appeared at least once with the Cape Cod garage band The Barbarians, who recorded the 1965 hit "Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl", the unofficial anthem of the Great Hairy Cause.

<<Previous

Advice to young secretaries, 1964

Learning to be Female: Puberty!

Special thanks to Rick Santorum

"Take your Clothes off when you Dance"

This day in hair history

Are slacks unhealthy for women?

Unsex and "His 'n Hers"

"Because I said so." The opening shot in the culture wars.

Girls' Dress Code, Illinois 1969

Hair-raising hero: George Leonard/Georgie Porgie

Jo Paoletti

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