Among all the changes in the lives of females over the last 50 years, I rate the improvement in clothing options as one of the best. It may be my autism spectrum tendencies coming out, but to me the comfort factor in what I wear is of utmost importance.
Until my senior year in high school, girls were required to wear dresses or skirts to school. Even after the hard-won change, jeans were still out of the question. Because I have loathed wearing dresses since my earliest memories, this did nothing to make my school years more enjoyable, even though my mother, God bless her, did her best to make my dresses from comfortable material.
By the time our girls were of school age, the situation had improved dramatically. Pants, and even shorts, were acceptible school attire—so much more practical, especially for active elementary school students living in Florida.
I do know families who insist, even today, that their girls wear dresses. I would never do that to my children, but I'll admit that if such dresses as they generally wear had been an option in my day, perhaps I wouldn’t have minded so much. In addition to accepting pants appropriate apparel for women, we seem to have become much more tolerant of a wide variety of dress styles and lengths. When I was very young, dresses for little girls were stiff, scratchy and frilly—a nightmare for a touch-sensitive girl—and by my teen years skirts were uncomfortably short and getting shorter. Practical dresses of a decent length and comfortable material might have won me over, but they were nowhere to be seen.
Even so, pants are the very best for climbing trees, and I never wanted to wear clothing that tied me to the ground.
I’m very thankful that today’s girls—and women—have more choices.
