CLOTHES ENCOUNTERS: I NOTE 60 YEARS OF THE MINISKIRT WITH AN ARGUMENT FOR PRIVACY IN DRESS

This year marks the 60^th anniversary of the miniskirt. It has been 6 decades since fashions that flashed thighs and hugged hips first became all the rage and accepted in accordance with their popularity and with cultural agreement. It seems a long time, from 1964 to 2024, but I argue that a genuine discussion surrounding choices in dress has not been had, and that today the youngest people of our times are paying the price. That may sound patronizing, and maybe even like an exercise in blame-shifting, that I’m linking changes in the 60s to some of the problems that teens and 20 somethings are having now, but bear with me. 

 

Admittedly, in the mid-60s, there was something of a debate, and those in favor of the widespread embrace of short skirts and tight trousers often acted smug, chummy and spoke like they’d won a big battle and made people feel like they were victorious for wearing a miniskirt. They seemed sympathetic to people who wanted to dress the way they wanted; they made their case based on awarding “freedom”. Those who pushed for flesh-revealing clothes were influential, in part, because the masses believed they were on their side. There was, in their fold, ordinary folk people who felt that things had been too authoritarian, that before it had been too easy to label a woman as “loose” if she wore clothes that were just a bit shorter or tighter. 

 

For example, many Irish Catholic women have told me that there was a lack of charity in the 1950s and anyone who was trying to wear something different was victimized by gossip, some of it malicious with implications of sexual inuendo and some so harmful to reputations as to be detraction. I acknowledge this uncharity and decry it. But I ask that a thorough analysis be made of whether or not the miniskirt and similar clothing ushered in a form of sartorial uncharity, that has become so “normal” that we are more unconscious to its consequences, even though it is ubiquitous. 

 

My thesis is that there are real psychological concerns for the young teen in tight, short clothes. And that this is particularly true for young girls and young women. Objectively, the shorter and tighter the clothes, the less privacy to the body. The female body is changing rapidly, as a cycle kicks in, and curves appear, and body weight goes up and down. Clothes that are as tight as sausage casing allow the body to be observed and for private information to be readily seen by anyone, even before the wearer had made their peace with these changes. 

 

The teenage body is often changing more rapidly than the mind can catch up. I speak from experience. I had a painful bout of anorexia when I was 12-13 because of rapid body changes (I seemed to become a new person overnight and went from buying in the children’s department to the women’s shops). I was convinced that if such changes kept coming, I’d be a fat blob by 15. I realise now that the tight jeans I wore made me too obsessed with my new curves, but when I made known my fears of sudden weight-gain, I was told I could go on a diet. 

 

Often the teenage mind is having a hard enough time assimilating these drastic physical changes without the added pressure of broadening hips and pelvises being much more easily spectated than they would be in skirts or dresses. Admittedly, teenagers enjoy the attention that they garner from tight, short clothing, and many of them do not have the same psychological struggles as others, but by wearing short, tight clothes it just helps make it more the custom. 

 

And yes, no one questions if it is right or wrong anymore, the silence that met the 60^th anniversary of the miniskirt tells us just that, but this piece is designed to prompt us to break that silence and ask if it is really psychologically healthy for young girls to wear clothes that deny their privacy? It does make for young women who are much more defensive, they are showing their bodies in a way that in a previous age was only seen by the doctor. Then there is a pitting of young people against each other on the basis of their weight; heavier girls who are unhappy in tight clothes are often told coldly and without any empathy that the problem is their weight, not the clothes.

 

All over the UK, very young teens, mainly girls are being invited to question their sex, and apparently, or so they say, that it’s in the interests of their privacy that they don’t tell their parents of certain decisions. This is often done by the same people who protest much too much that they are in favor of the young person’s privacy when they mandate a form of clothing that allows anything but privacy to the young person. They talk a good game about “boundaries” when clothes that allow eyes to evaluate intimate body parts have already facilitated the tearing away of the respect owed to a person’s personal space, and this is inherently uncharitable. 

 

The call for a re-embrace of a code of dress that gives the youngest generation privacy is urgent and of paramount importance. I argue that it needs to be grounded in charity, and we need to make our case from our hearts. Brave people, including people who’ve learned the hard way in the school of tight leggings and low midriffs and want to save others from their mistakes, ought be upheld in their mission to restore a way of dressing that is psychologically healthier. Far from being something superficial or an obsession with externals, the mission to restore charity in dress is key to restoring civilization.

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I wrote this column for the winter edition of The Mass of Ages, the magazine of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales and you may read it here. The painting accompanying this piece was executed by William-Adolphe Bouguereau.