Watch out Mickey, Minnie Mouse is wearing the pants in the family!
Transitioning from a polka dot dress to a navy blue pantsuit has caused so many raised eyebrows, you’d think she was transitioning from Minnie to Marty.
The fashion police have been in full force lately, freaking out over the footwear of M&M characters and now the stylings of a beloved cartoon mouse.
I haven’t seen such controversy over a woman wearing a pantsuit since Hillary Clinton wore one for her official First Lady portrait.
Or since I was in eighth grade in 1969.
Down with Pants!
In the spring of 1969, while scruffy college kids in Berkley were carrying protests signs like “Stop the War” and “Ban the Bomb,” a shy, 14-year-old suburban girl was scribbling out her own protests signs with a red Flair pen: “Down With Pants!”
Oblivious to the double entendre of my home-grown campaign slogan which caused more than a few lusty snickers from hormone-raging high school boys, I felt proud of my bold “anti-slacks-wearing” campaign posters. A decidedly unpopular position, it didn’t keep me from voting against a new school resolution allowing women and girls to wear pants to school.
Yes, you heard that right. This leftist feminist voted no!
As I entered eighth grade, the option of allowing both female students and teachers to wear pants to our junior-senior high school came up for question. For those too young to remember, once upon a time girls were not permitted to wear slacks to school.
Ever.
Wearing a dress to school in winter meant bare legs.
That meant on snowy, frigid New York winters, girls in dresses had to make do with a pair of thin wool tights to keep their shivering legs warm while waiting for the school bus.
Including girls like me.
Code: Dress
Whether this new interest in dress codes was the end result of a long-running, hotly debated discussion at the PTA, or argued over tuna salad sandwiches in the teacher’s lunchroom it became the cause celebre that term. In a rare show of inclusiveness, the school administration decided to include students in the decision and allow us to vote at the end of the school year.
No slacker, I put my well-honed political energy behind the “no slacks to school” cause choosing the considerably less favored stance. Progressives were all for pants equality, citing not only their practicality but the need to keep up with the changing times. Traditionalists wanted to keep a sense of structure citing a “destruction” of gender norms.”
It was still a time when dress codes were strictly defined and strictly enforced. And not just in schools. Whether for travel, theatre, or restaurants, people dressed up, and for m’lady that meant wearing a dress. Casual slacks were just fine at home or shopping at the local A&P but a lady never dined out in pants.
For a politically liberal girl like myself, who had recently devoted time and heart working on first Bobby Kennedy’s ill-fated presidential campaign and then democrat Hubert Humphrey, choosing this conservative position seems hard to fathom.
There were School Clothes and Play clothes and they were never one and the same.
Despite my commitment to civil rights and social justice when it came to women and girls wearing pants in public places like school I was opposed. There were “school clothes” and then there were casual “play clothes” and never the two should meet. Separate but equal was the rule I felt should stand.
I would find myself on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of women’s lib.
Photo by Tony Palmieri/Penske Media/REX/Shutterstock (6986940g)
Ethel Kennedy and friends outside La Côte Basque restaurant on November 2, 1965 in New York..
Speaking at school lunchroom rallies over the din of lunch trays and food fights, I quoted heavily if not heavy-handed from an April 1969 New York Times article citing well-known restaurants in New York City that would not allow pants to be worn by female patrons.
Pantsuits constantly courted controversy in the late 60s.
Despite magazine articles reporting brisk sales in pants suits and women buying into the trend, restaurateurs were most definitely not.
“Ladies should be dressed as ladies,” was the reason one restaurateur gave for not allowing women to wear pants while dining there. This same N.Y.C. restaurant, Lafayette on 50th Street also banned, turtlenecks, knocking out beatniks and women libbers in one swoop.
The maître de of Cote Basque that bastion of ladies who lunch on East 55th Street said: “Pants look very nice on some women but they do not belong in a restaurant any more than swimming suits. We will continue our policy: no pants.”
This was the same restaurant where socialite Nan Kemper was notoriously turned away from for daring to wear an elegant Yves St Laurent trouser suit. Ever the clever gal, she simply took off the pants and wore the blazer as a very short mini.
The venerable 21 Club firmly said “No pants suits at lunch. Attractive and flowing evening pants at night if they look like a gown.”
If an esteemed restaurant such as 21 would not allow pantsuits at lunch, then, my reasoning went, neither should the Carey High School lunchroom.
Cherry-picking my facts, I failed to mention that the title of the N.Y. Time’s article was “Restaurateurs Cave in Before the Pants Suit Onslaught.” The ban on women wearing pants, the article reported was very slowly being lifted. If they were considered elegant and chic they might be allowed.
The Times They Are a-Changin’
Although I believed in “doing your own thing,” dress codes provided a semblance of order for me in what was feeling like a world in disorder.
Within the course of a year, two beloved leaders were brutally murdered within months of each other, cities were burning, erupting in riots, and college campuses exploded in protests.
Simultaneously I was witnessing my own world changing out of my control as puberty took hold of my body, and a chaotic home life created confusion. What would puberty mean for me in a house where there was already sexual abuse?
I chose a silly but tangible battle to provide me with some sense of structure and continuity in a world that seemed unsafe and increasingly unfamiliar.
Not surprisingly, the vote for pants won handily.
And just like that… classrooms were a sea of elephant bells, double knit polyester plaids, and low rise Levis in groovy prints.
In my flower power Wranglers, I never looked back.
PostScript By 1972 women was demanding more freedom in what they wore — Title IX of the Education Amendment declared that schools could no longer forbid young women from wearing pants.
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