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I was checking out Michele’s latest scavenger hunt, and it took me to Pesky Apostrophe, who was talking about miniskirts and a principal’s method of discerning proper length.
She was also talking about a proposed Virginia law that fortunately died before it could be implemented, and I’m still laughing whilst the horrible images she concocted are hovering before my brain.
This is a really good blog, folks. Get over there now and read all about it.
My former school’s former principal had a ‘thing’ about following handbook regulations completely and without footnote.
In the handbook, it stated that female students’ shorts MUST BE NO SHORTER THAN THE LENGTH OF THE ARM. Fingertip length.
In real life, however, no two junior high girls’ arms are going to be the same length. This rule would allow some girls to wear shorts that didn’t even come near the crotch, starting at the waistband, and would force other girls to wear capris. It didn’t matter. The handbook ruled.
Every warm day when the shorts came to school, this principal would be patrolling the hallways, putting girls up against the wall and checking out their shorts via their arm length.
This handbook also stated that ‘no article of clothing may be worn in a matter for which it was not intended.’
This principal interpreted this to mean that no flannel pants could be worn to school. To her, flannel meant jammies. And jammies were not intended to be worn to school. When it was pointed out to her that flannel pants were being sold in areas of stores where Levis were also being sold, she took another slant.
She would come into a classroom, search for flannel pants, and then put the child against the wall and check for a zipper or buttons, or the word “nightwear” on the label.
If the flannel pants had no solid means of closure, they were jammies, and the child was sent home to change into school clothes.
Sometimes the child came to school wearing warm flannel pants that covered half the body, only to be sent home, and return in shorts that barely covered the subject, if you get my drift.
This principal used to patrol the hallways, pulling along beside her the skeleton from the health room, and use the skeleton to show random kids what was meant by ‘shorts at arm’s length.’
Can you even picture it? A principal, pulling a real skeleton on a wheeled rack, stalking up and down the hallways, stopping kids in groups and demonstrating ‘arm’s length’ with a skeleton?
She also demonstrated this ‘arm’s length’ rule at a convocation, wearing shorts herself and pulling them up to her crotch to show the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ lengths. This did not endear her to the student population, as it revealed skin that NOBODY wanted to see. EVER.
Pesky Apostrophe blogged about how her mother, back in the sixties, had to kneel before the principal and have her miniskirt measured. I remember those days well, because we still wore miniskirts in the early seventies. The school nurse made us kneel, and if our skirts didn’t touch the floor, we were sent home. This was before the days of pantyhose, too; I remember how hard it was to keep our garters hidden in those short skirts. Not the sexy lacy garters of today; these were UNDERWEAR garters; white and hideous and attached to an equally ugly girdle. Gross. They were just. . . . . gross.
I think what I remember most about high school in the late sixties and early seventies was the fact that the popular girls got by with just about any skirt length and underwear exposure, and certain other groups of girls got by with nothing.
Oh wait. It’s still that way.
Never mind.
My miniskirts were size five.
This number is something else that’s changed considerably. I’d tell you what it is now, but I’m really not that good at math. It would involve a calculator, and a really big number. And when I say “really big number,” what I really mean is, a REALLY big number. You don’t want to know. Honest, you don’t.