Of crinolines and work boots

A Post a Day in May 12/31

There are clothes and then there is fashion. For many of us, there can be tremendous tension between the two: what we want to wear versus what we are expected to wear because of who we are — or are seen to be. 

An offhand comment during a conversation with a friend a while back sparked Val, my partner, to begin writing down some of her earlier memories of being a girl growing up in the 1950s and then a young woman studying sciences at university. The excerpt below is from her work-in-progress titled ‘Crinolines and Work Boots’, which is growing to include way more than clothes but clothes got it going, so here is a bit of Val’s backstory…

———

Val about age 3 or so, long before the jeans
incident, but already showing her style

Crinolines and Work Boots by Val Paape an excerpt

It was the mid-sixties when I transferred to the University of Illinois and had enrolled in a Zoology course called “Natural History of the Vertebrates”. Having chosen to major in the biological sciences, I had already noticed that the “sub-culture” of students to which I now belonged was, or seemed to be, less socially and culturally hidebound [than the sorority sisters of my earlier college days]. 

The women did not go out on field trips watching birds in dresses and lipstick, and most had either long hair in pony tails or short hair that was easily cared for. Their interactions with male students seemed to me to be more normal, more friendly and authentic without the burden of a male-female artifice I had been used to. Cultural stereotypes and male/female roles seemed less rigid and less defined, even though that may not have been the case in other fields. The women, profs and students, were as comfortable in jeans, plaid shirts and boots as anyone could be. And they seemed to me to be more straightforward and direct about things in general. As importantly, I discovered that one could not go out on a serious field trip unless one wore a good pair of boots.

I think we must have had an orientation to the field work component of the course by one of the Teaching Assistants or TAs as they were called, and that is where we learned about the necessity of wearing boots. I had already noticed that many of the students wore European style hiking boots or work boots. At that time, the former could not be purchased directly anywhere east of the Mississippi, except maybe in some well-to-do part of Appalachia or New England. One of the TAs suggested that I try to find a good pair of boy’s work boots. For women with smaller feet like me, he said, they were a good bet.

I went home for a visit the next weekend, but mostly on a mission to get a pair of boots. I knew they would be a hard sell for my mother. She was, of course, reluctant to think of her daughter in work boots. “What is wrong with your sneakers?” she asked. I talked about sometimes having to walk over rough terrain and about having to go “into the field” in wet weather. As she was still skeptical, I said something like “…and to protect me from rattlesnakes.” Although sceptical of the danger of rattlesnakes, she relented. However, I wasn’t really kidding her. Mississauga Rattlers were common in southern Illinois and I knew that the course included a weekend field trip to that area.

So, off we went to shop for boots. When I mentioned work boots to the clerk, surprisingly he said he had two or three good options for me and cheerfully went off to get some pairs. Among them, was a beautiful pair of Redwing boots with 6” uppers of a soft reddish brown leather. They fit me perfectly, comfortably, and even my mother had to admit that they didn’t look “too terrible” on my feet. They weren’t “too mannish”! I saw the clerk smile at that and we exchanged a conspiratorial glance. He said something about selling quite a few Redwings to women who lived and worked on farms or were scientists or loved walking in the woods or other areas where the ground was rough. I don’t know if this was true or not, but it mollified my mother and it makes a good story.

The other thing I remember about the young women in the biological sciences is that many of them wore what looked like very comfortable jeans. My mother had given in and allowed me to have jeans because of their practicality. As I entered my teens, I had girls’ jeans that were available at the time. Women’s jeans of the fifties and early sixties were a weird mix of fashion, a bizarre idea of women’s bodies, and functionality. And, I would argue, a rather bizarre concept of functionality. They typically were high waisted and had baggy legs. As a teen, one of the first pairs my mother let me have had a side zip. I did not find them particularly comfortable, but they were better than nothing. This first pair wore out before college, but I still did not own a comfortable pair. One day, I asked a classmate about her jeans and where she got them. She said that they were men’s jeans and a good place to buy them was at the “Army & Navy Surplus Store”. Off I went, had good help from the staff and came “home” with a good fitting pair of functional and comfortable men’s 29” waist/30” inseam… costing only half the price of a new pair of women’s jeans. I noticed that most, if not all, of the women in my biology classes wore men’s jeans on field trips that they bought from the Army and Navy.…

———

The fashion industry has a lot to answer for, stuffing us, as it does, into ‘girl’ clothes and ‘boy’ clothes — pink or blue — from the moment we pop into the world. If we’re lucky, we have parents who eschew those boundaries in favour of comfort and style that befits our character.