Boomers Had Strict School Dress Codes

This time of year, Mister Boomer recalls the daily dread he felt as the Labor Day holiday weekend approached. It meant one thing: summer was over and school was about to begin.  Another dreaded part of every impending school year was the mandatory back-to-school shopping venture. As growing boomers, clothing from the year before often would no longer fit. For many boomers, including Mister B, school clothes were different than casual clothes. School dress codes had a great deal to say about that.

Mister Boomer and his siblings went to parochial school. Therefore, girls were required to wear uniforms, and boys wore dress pants, dress shoes, dress shirts and ties. Styles and fit were strictly enforced. Girls could not have a skirt hem land more than one inch above their knees, and it was often checked with a ruler at the school entrance. Boys were allowed the leeway of a bow tie or clip-on neck tie, but in Mister B’s early days, the shirt had to be white, light blue or pale yellow. Girls had two styles of collar that was allowed on their blouses, and had to wear plaid jumpers or skirts and black patent leather shoes with a single strap over the instep — known as a Mary Jane. Boys were required to wear leather dress shoes with laces. That was all that was allowed.

Mister B’s public school neighbors had rules that were a bit more relaxed in that they did not require boys to wear ties, but their shirts were required to have a collar. It was preferred that girls wore skirts and blouses or dresses, though by the mid-1960s, pants were allowed.

As the rebel images of James Dean and Marlon Brando popularized dungarees in movies of the 1950s, kids wanted to embrace the fashion. There were protests, mild and polite by today’s standards, by students from coast to coast. Still, for several years, the students lost the argument. Long before dungarees became known as blue jeans, dress codes explicitly forbade them for both boys and girls. As loafer shoes and penny loafers became a trend, they were banned by many school districts.

The sixties changed everything, man. Many point to The Beatles for popularizing longer hair for boys, from the moment they landed in the U.S. with their “moptop” hairdos. In Mister Boomer’s observation, though, there was a sea change in 1967 after the Summer of Love. Take a look at audiences at rock concerts before that time and after, and you’ll see a marked difference in the way boys and girls dressed. Before 1967, you’d see kids dressed like they were going to school. This is quite a contrast when you view early videos of Elvis, Chuck Berry, the Rolling Stones or The Beatles, for example. However, after 1967, there were Bohemian and Eastern influences that helped to create what we now know as the cliché of sixties fashions.

Before the mid-sixties, a great many school districts did not feel there was a reason to have written guidelines on hair. Boomer boys and girls tested their patience by adopting every trend that came along, and that necessitated a reaction to “keep the kids in line.” There were all sorts of seemingly random rules designed to limit everything from girls’ bangs and hair height to boys’ sideburns and overall hair length.

In the last half of the 1960s, school dress codes slowly began to loosen. In public schools, most school districts allowed “clean” blue jeans, and bans of loafers quietly disappeared. The styles of the day slowly brought athletic shoes into the casual realm as the ’60s became the ’70s.

By most historical accounts, the confluence of culture and modernized education methods of the 1960s altered the way dress codes were viewed. The era of Civil Rights brought about in some small measure an understanding that dress codes could be culturally biased, and it was a time when the concept of “students’ rights” was being discussed. For boomers who were in school at the beginning and end of the 1960s, there was a huge difference in what school clothes their parents were shopping for as the new school year approached.

Take a look at the way kids are dressed when they head to school today, and it appears to old Mister Boomer, there are no rules governing dress whatsoever. Mister B recalls many students in his day either altering their look once they left the house (girls rolling the waistband of their skirt to make it shorter, for example), or literally changing clothes when they left the house and again before walking into school. These fashion rebels were definitely mild compared to the beyond-casual presentations of today’s kids.

Whether boomers welcome or lament these relaxed school dress codes, today’s kids have boomers to thank for their sartorial freedom. Boomers blazed the trail over three decades to set the stage for today’s casual class-wear.

What memories of school dress codes do you have, boomers?

Boomers Remember the Time Before Title IX

Fifty years ago this past week (June 23, 1972), Title IX of the Education Amendment was enacted by Congress. It was Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana who authored the wording in the bill:

No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.

Women’s rights advocates were already marching and protesting the slow plodding of Equal Rights Amendment legislation. In a strategic move to avoid sparking public debate and further protest, the bipartisan committee asked women’s groups to not call attention to Title IX to let the senators do the work. As a result, the bill was passed without much fanfare.

Despite the fact that women had proven themselves more than capable of physical labor during World War II, decades of social mores dictated that sports were “unlady-like” and women should not be permitted to exert themselves in public. In fact, in some circles, it was thought that if women performed sports that required much physical activity, especially during menstruation cycles, they would be putting themselves in hazardous health situations! Still, the first women’s professional baseball league was formed during World War II, but it was dissolved in 1954. In the boomer era, attitudes were changing and feminist activism was calling for all types of equality for women, including in sports. Women could finally play in their own national championships in gymnastics and track and field in 1969; swimming, badminton, volleyball, and lastly, basketball, were added before Title IX became law.

Despite exceptions for certain sports at select schools, prior to this bill, girls and women had few opportunities to participate in organized sports at schools and universities. Schools, from elementary to high school and on to colleges and universities, had little, if any, budget for girls’ sports. According to Forbes, the year before the passage of Title IX (1971), universities dedicated just one percent of their athletic budgets to women’s sports. Title IX required them to match the funding of what was available to boys. Reports indicate just 15 percent of college women participated in sports in 1972, prior to the bill’s passage. Many universities did not sponsor a women’s basketball team at all before Title IX.

Coaching was another example of disparities based on sex in sports before Title IX. Reports indicate 90% of coaches for the women’s sports that did exist were male. It would be another 20 years before women made a significant mark in the coaching of women’s sports, but to this day, women still coach less than half of the women’s sports teams. Teachers and coaches recall that in that era, locker rooms were also a point of contention, as many venues built only male locker rooms. Since there were few women’s sports, there was (in their eyes), not a need for female locker rooms. Demand for equal locker room facilities were an ongoing project that would take another 20 years.

What sports were offered to women, prior to Title IX? Mister Boomer recalls that in his elementary school, there was no gym, and no organized sports. The local high school did have boys’ baseball, football and basketball teams, in addition to track and field and swimming. Girls could swim or join track and field.

It was President Eisenhower who first established the President’s Council on Physical Fitness. With memories of World War II readiness still in his mind, he became concerned that Americans would grow complacent and less physically fit in the boom-time after the War. Nonetheless, for various reasons, no programs of note were able to get off the ground during his presidency. President Kennedy “picked up the ball” and attempted to address the physical fitness of students. However, there was not a direct correlation drawn between physical fitness and sports, so the program — which concentrated mostly on exercise — had a moderate effect on health, but did not disrupt the status quo of the disparities between boys’ and girls’ sports.

What do you recall about the sports opportunities that were available to you, boomers?