SOCIETAL
MORES
From the
chapter "The Gentlest Decade"
SOCIETAL MORES
The
idea of a female wearing a bathing suit that showed her
navel was unheard of in the 1950s, except in the minds of
the boys. Dress
codes for girls were unwritten, but, if a girl dressed
inappropriately by wearing something that let more than a
postage stamp size piece of skin show, a teacher or
neighborhood busybody would let the offending girl’s
parents know the girl’s clothing was unacceptable.
A change in style would be made almost immediately.
Skirt lengths ending between the knee and ankle were
acceptable, and enough petticoats to provide ballast for a
Navy Destroyer were generally the uniform of the day.
Blouses usually buttoned up to the neck and sweaters
were worn draped around the shoulder.
About
the only way we could see any thing remotely resembling
flesh was to sneak-a-peek at the women’s underwear section
in the Sears Roebuck catalogue.
It was better than nothing.
The coming of the two-piece bathing suit was welcomed
by all males in
Americus
, regardless
of religion or national origin.
Of course, none of the girls we knew had parents who
would permit their daughters to wear such “low-rent
looking” bathing attire.
I
wonder what those parents would think about what some of the
well-dressed teenaged girls wear now.
The way teenage girls are allowed to dress today
brings new definition to the term “trashy chic.”
I recently rode by a charity car wash being put on by
what looked to be fourteen and fifteen year old high school
girls. They wore
some right skimpy and revealing bikinis that left a lot of
skin uncovered. With
the hip-hop music blaring from several boom boxes and the
girls all showing off their prowess at extremely lewd
dancing I thought I was ringside at a “Sluts R Us”
convention. There
was more meat hanging out in that parking lot than in a
Chicago
butcher
shop.
Tight
sweaters took a long time to become déclassé.
That didn’t really matter, since most of the girls
didn’t have enough equipment to properly fill out a tight
sweater anyhow. I
once overheard two girls talking at their lockers between
classes. They
were bemoaning the fact that none of the exercises they had
been told to try increased their bra size.
I believe the chant that went with the exercises was,
“I must, I must, I must increase my bust.”
The flat-chested girl told the other girl, “I got
up late this morning and was dressing in a hurry.
I accidentally put my bra on backwards, and damned if
it didn’t still fit.”
Americus
and
Sumter
County
were truly
blessed with a large number of good-looking young women.
The only better looking Southern Belles than ours
were those who hailed from the Ellaville area. They were
fine. The girls
in Cordele were okay, but if you dated a Cordele girl you
needed a very fast car so you could outrun the Cordele
hoodlums back to the
Lake
Blackshear
Bridge
and the
safety of
Sumter
County
.
The Cordele girls were no problem, but the Cordele
boys had a real bad problem with anyone from
Americus
or
Sumter
County
dating one
of the local bobby-soxers.
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