FASHION STATEMENT

Isn't it funny how clothing fashions go "in and out" with the times? When I was young, ladies never wore slacks. I remember my family was making a trip from Oregon to California, and I begged to have some pants to wear on the trip. I was about 10 years old then. It took a lot of begging, but my Mom finally allowed me to have a pair of pants. What a thrill that was for me. By the time I was 12 years old, many young ladies were wearing slacks, and they just got more and more popular. No one looked at us as doing something shameful because we were wearing trousers.

I can also remember when my little brother wore short pants to school when he was in the first grade. Those were not what we think of as shorts today, but were pretty little one piece, with a bib, and often even made with velvet. He was practicing for a school play one day, and came home from school crying. He told Mom that he was not going to be in the play if he had to wear the short pants. She asked him why, and he said, "one of the boys said he would pinch my butt if I wore those pants." That was the end of the short pants for him. But many boys still wore them.

When I was in high school, the fad was that boys wore corduroy pants, and NEVER washed them. That's right, I said never! They were usually a beige color, and by the time the school year was over the pants could stand by themselves if you put them in the corner, and they looked greasy, but the girls seemed to love them. Girls began wearing skirts that came above the knee, but my Mom insisted my skirts be below the knee. After I got to school I would roll the top of the skirt so that it was short like the other girls. Before I went home, I unrolled it so I didn't get into trouble.

In 1968 I worked in the Alaska Governor's office, and always dresssed stylish. Skirts were very short then, and I kept up with the working girls. If you were thin, they looked OK, but if you had excess weight on your body, they were truly bad. Modesty went out the door with those short skirts. The major thing I can remember at that time was that ladies did not wear slacks to work. That was unheard of and was not acceptable. One winter when the temperatures dipped down below zero one brave lady wore a very nice pant suit to work. She worked in the Department of Administration Commissioneer's office. When the boss came in , he took one look at her, and promptly told her to go home and put on a dress before she came back to work.

That news swept all the offices rapidly, and there were partitions passed in most all the State offices saying that men could wear pants on their legs to be warm, but ladies had to let it all hang out and freeze. Shortly after that, a memo was issued saying that in the cold weather, pant suits would be accepted, but we were never to wear jeans or regular slacks with a blouse or sweater. It had to be a pant suit.

Remember when you went to the doctor's office and the lovely nurses were always wearing their starched white uniforms and caps, and a doctor looked like a doctor in his starchy white coat?

Today you can't tell a nurse from a patient. You can't even find anyone in the hospitals that look like a nurse. There are not identifying pins, or caps, and many of them look like they slept in their work clothes. Men teachers always wore a suit and tie, and the ladies wore a practical dress or suit with heels and hose. Today? They don't even shave before they go to work, and their clothes do not present a dignified position.

No wonder our kids of today are wearing those horrible "low rise" pants that hang so low that you see their underwear, and sometimes lack of underwear. The crotch is so low that it must rub their knees raw. They have no one to look up to that they admire or aspire to be like.

I recall the day when ladies would never go to church without a hat, heels and their best Sunday dress. Men were always in their best clothes too. I guess our respect for the Lord has even disappeared with the ages.

I assume that I am showing my age with this story, but I do miss the decorum that used to exist when we were proud of our appearance, and in school we were taught how to dress to apply for a job, or when going to a wedding or a funeral where we wanted to show respect. I am sure those days are gone forever, and I wonder how much farther will things go.