Could you respect a woman in the female uniform?
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I have to admit, I knew girls who thought that part of the thrill of minis weren't just showing off the legs, but seeing how short they could wear them without getting in trouble by adults. These girls didn't mind their underwear being shown. Thank God we didn't wear thongs back in the days.
From my experience in school, that's still a lot of it for girls who wear short-shorts and short skirts - seeing how far they can push what is 'acceptable.'
In that regard, I can see how some women might have found it liberating, even if in reality it was far from practical or comfortable.
number6
Vice Admiral
The other thing to consider is that some people want to dress provocatively. I think it's important in our growth as a society to be free to be able to do that. People dress to be noticed. People dress to fit in. People dress for success. People dress for shock value.
The miniskirt allowed women to break some rules about how women at the time were expected to dress. As women gained their rightful place in the workforce, obviously styles and fashion changed as well. I've worked with people who dress like hobos (fortunately not smelling like them..hopefully), hippies, jocks, hipsters, hookers, conmen..etc..
If it's standard dress to wear a starfleet uniform with a miniskirt, it's obvious that the fashion is considered commonplace. I don't think women were distracted by the man skirts worn by TNG crew in the first season. I did think they looked silly.
I will also say that I look badass in a kilt!
I'm sorry. Where in the mid-60s did women and girls get to wear minis? A very, very, conservative time. Right? The mini then came out and it was picked up in the popular culture as a women's liberation symbol. Why is this so hard?
The funny thing is, I'm agreeing with your timeline. You just can't seem to accept the women's liberation thing. I'm not putting feminism down here, it was just a fashion thing that was popularized by the liberation movement of the mid to late 60s.
It does seem to be the history.
Though, I get what you mean about 'overstating' it. But then, it was the 60s.
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Lets turn this one around shall we.
Two men are up for an interview in the corporate business world. Be it a law firm, financial place, computer firm, or hell, Paramount Studios.
Person A shows up in a nice suit, looks like he SHOULD be working there.
Person B shows up...okay, maybe not a stoner look, but something a little informal, like he was about ready to go out and have a few beers with some friends after the interview.
Now, who do you think would get the job? The one who actually looked PROFESSIONAL. Not the one that looked like they were there just because he had to and had no expectations of actually getting hired.
Apperances do count in certain environments. Its not just how you conduct yourself, its how you look as well. Part of the presentation of you as a person.
I'm sorry. Where in the mid-60s did women and girls get to wear minis? A very, very, conservative time. Right? The mini then came out and it was picked up in the popular culture as a women's liberation symbol. Why is this so hard?
The funny thing is, I'm agreeing with your timeline. You just can't seem to accept the women's liberation thing. I'm not putting feminism down here, it was just a fashion thing that was popularized by the liberation movement of the mid to late 60s.
It does seem to be the history.
Though, I get what you mean about 'overstating' it. But then, it was the 60s.
Plum, where are you getting this history? I accept that you are stating it in good faith, but it just isn't quite right.
You ask "Where in the mid-'60s did women and girls get to wear minis?" Um, how about nearly everywhere? Well, OK - I admit that is an overstatement. First, we need to define "mid-'60s." Miniskirts burst into fashion in 1966 - the designer was Mary Quant. Really. She got the idea, Wiki tells me, from from André Courrèges' "Mod" look in 1964-65. I can't tell you about André Courrèges from my own knowledge, me being more of a pop culture than a haute couture sort of gal, but that Mary Quant popularized this style and that it rapidly turned up everywhere is, as you would say, history - widely known history at that. By 1967 miniskirts were almost everywhere and by 1968 they were everywhere except convents and maybe a few parochial schools.
The times may have been conservative, but the skirt lengths weren't.
Second, some employers objected for a while, but not very long of a while, and some parents and schools objected for a while, too - but pretty soon, they had to give in too. Because we all - and I do mean all - wore them.
It didn't matter if parents, schools and employers objected to minis because girls wore them anyway. They wore skirts and rolled them up at the waistband as soon as they were out from under the parental or academic eye. I even knew girls who temporarily taped or stapled their skirts up to make them short even if that looked, frankly, really awful. Awful+short was better than nice+long.
Look at photos from the era. Here is a fun link - it's from the 1967 senior fashion show at Dedworth Green Senior School somewhere in the U.K.: http://www.dedworth.org.uk/photos/a_fashion_shoot_in_dedworth_1967.htm
And here is the outfit that I desperately wanted (circa 1968) only my mother wouldn't let me get the go-go boots: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Girl_in_1968.jpg
She let me wear miniskirts, though.
You keep talking about "history." This is history, of course. But for me, it's also plain old life. I was alive then, wearing miniskirts (but not, alas, go-go boots
) and watching other girls and women wear miniskirts. And so when sociologists and celebrities and so on talk about how liberating they were, I (as the girl who wore the damn things) am like "Liberating for whom? Not me. And not for anybody I knew." We didn't wear them to be liberated - we wore them because they were cute and in fashion. Women who had zero interest in feminism or women's liberation wore them because they were cute and in fashion. Apparently some other people found them liberating, but all I can say is I very much doubt that that's how most of the wearers saw them. Some, sure, but not even close to the majority.In contrast, the modern feminist movement preceded miniskirts (The Feminine Mystique was published in 1963, The New York Times tells me), and by the time it really hit pop culture status in the mid-'70s, skirts weren't that short any more. You can, with some justice, I think, make the argument that miniskirts were one symptom of a growing feminist movement, but to just flat-out say, "Miniskirts were liberation" is just not true.
I am not entirely sure exactly what you mean by "popularized by the liberation movement" - miniskirts were popularized by fashion shows in New York, Paris and London and by Vogue and McCalls and similar fashion magazines (and eventually by virtually every business that sold women's clothing) - maybe that fits in with your definition of "the liberation movement" though I must say it doesn't fit mine. But they became popular for the simple reason that lots and lots and lots of perfectly ordinary women and girls with nothing more on their minds than looking cute and in fashion decided to wear them. That's why any fashion trend becomes popular, when you come right down to it.
And I must emphasize yet again that as T'Bonz and I noted earlier, it took a lot longer for slacks to be as widely accepted as miniskirts. I, for example, wore miniskirts to school by no later than 1968. I wasn't allowed (except for snow days, which we didn't have very many of in my Southern California hometown) to wear slacks to school until 1972. And BTW, my dad, who never said a word about skirt length, as far as I can remember, never did approve of his daughters wearing slacks to school - he just gave way to keep peace in the home.
So it seems obvious to me as somebody who lived through this era that if Trek really wanted to show how liberated the women were, it would have put them in slacks. That would, at least, have been far more fashion-forward and more shocking, too. By 1967, minis were mainstream, and by 1968 they were like, "Eh. No big deal." Honest to God.
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Sounds like my reality at the time. I lived in a place that got winter, and we could wear pants TO school, but had to change in the restroom when we got there back into a dress or skirt.
My dad hated me wearing slacks. First, I got him to agree to twice a week (8th grade.) I was sneaky and wore a skirt and top on Wednesday, when I had church youth group, so I took jeans to school to take to church afterwards. You better believe the second I hit the school, I changed out of that skirt!
So I only had to wear a dress twice a week.By ninth grade (1972) it was all over. No one cared if you wore slacks or jeans to school. My dad never said a word when I switched over totally to jeans and slacks in 9th grade. Dresses were still rather short all the way through my senior year (1976.)
So for me, slacks were liberating. Minis weren't. Minis were about having to follow fashion (there WERE no alternatives) and trying not to flash my underwear. Sorry, but showing panties ain't liberating.
I don't see how this conflicts with my point. I'm not arguing that prejudice only exists against women. My point is it's wrong regardless of who the target is.
Ironically, it wasn't long ago that miniskirts were allowed in corporate dress and indeed accepted as professional -- I worked for a year in corporate America in the 90s and remember them fondly. Cleavage, though, was verboten, though I see women showing cleavage today even with a silk blouse and business suit. Bedhead hairstyles, ill-fitting clothes, razor stubble, goatees, tatoos, open-toe shoes, piercings, and earrings on men were all considered highly unprofessional once, but I see more than a few people in professional settings with them today. Times change, styles change. So do attitudes, at least for some people.
Apple Computer, too, was among the first corporations to allow workers to dress casually (in sharp contrast to competitor IBM). There, the "stoner" might actually have gotten the job because the interviewer could look past prejudices and instead focus on actual job qualifications. Even if Apple is no longer as relaxed (I don't know that it is or isn't), Zappos.com is known today for similar policies, and it consistently rates highly in employee loyalty and satisfaction while being profitable. Not all corporations or organizations follow the same practices or have the same culture as a Wall Street investment firm.
Nor does everyone cling to the Puritan ideal that the body is to be covered up in order for the person to merit respect and due consideration. I would like to think that 200 years from now, humans will have developed enough sense that they could get past a childish need to be appalled at the sight of a woman's legs if she chose to show them.
Lastly, I work with highly educated people. Dress ranges from extremely casual to 1950s button down, and no one seems to mind one way or the other. It's about what the individual is comfortable with. Some of us get paid more than others, but we're all icomfortable there. And it doesn't impede the work one bit.
Sounds like my reality at the time. I lived in a place that got winter, and we could wear pants TO school, but had to change in the restroom when we got there back into a dress or skirt.
My dad hated me wearing slacks. First, I got him to agree to twice a week (8th grade.) I was sneaky and wore a skirt and top on Wednesday, when I had church youth group, so I took jeans to school to take to church afterwards. You better believe the second I hit the school, I changed out of that skirt!
By ninth grade (1972) it was all over. No one cared if you wore slacks or jeans to school. My dad never said a word when I switched over totally to jeans and slacks in 9th grade. Dresses were still rather short all the way through my senior year (1976.)
So for me, slacks were liberating. Minis weren't. Minis were about having to follow fashion (there WERE no alternatives) and trying not to flash my underwear. Sorry, but showing panties ain't liberating.
First things first:
Second, we graduated from high school the very same year. Eek!
Let me guess: Your class motto was "Spirit of '76"?
Has someone posted about respecting a male officer in a minidress? Recall if you will the TNG skant! I could certainly respect a male officer in a kilt and posit that men who are not of Celtic descent in skirts could be commonplace by then. Sisko in a Masai-style Kente Cloth wrap - that would've been fun!
Guess it's already been covered - sorry!
Guess it's already been covered - sorry!
First things first:
Second, we graduated from high school the very same year. Eek!
I don't remember what our motto was ("Get out alive?"
) However, TPTB wanted us to wear red, white and blue for graduation instead of the usual Gator black-n-gold and we voted that down.
Yes, I do agree. But doesn't even the Wiki entry mention the liberation movement? Yea, it was hardly a giant leap forward or anything. I get that. I reckon life and fashion aren't any more divorced from the social political as anything else. *shrug*
I find it difficult to respect the women in the female uniforms of TOS...though it really depends. When it comes to the female characters that don't act COMPLETELY useless, in other words...they don't rely on the "stronger males" to protect them, THEN I find it much easier to respect them. Such a character is rare, which is a shame.
Look I don't kknow what to say, except when I was in high school (73-78), we wore our uniforms so short that we had to hold the back of the skirts down if we were writing on the black board. Of course they weren't supposed to be that short (no more than 5cm above the knee), but by the time we tucked them up under our school jumpers....they were htiched up higher when we walked past the boys' school to the railway station
Re: liberation - that was bra burning, not the miniskirt (which I loved and my dad hated onhis daughters in the early70s, and again in the early 80s when it came back as the bubble skirt).
Re: liberation - that was bra burning, not the miniskirt (which I loved and my dad hated onhis daughters in the early70s, and again in the early 80s when it came back as the bubble skirt).
image is everything.
what a person looks like or wears is vital.
coloreds for example are discriminated because they wear a dark skin.
chinese people have slanted eyes which makes them butt of jokes by people no less then the Prince Of England the Duke of Edinburgh,the queens husband as reported in the news.
Women in burqas are percieved by the media as suicide bombers due to same in news.
when u go for a job what you wears is the most important thing.
in 30 seconds u r hired/rejected.suit or jeans.
all those who claim they don't go with appearence are liers or self delusional...
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