marzNC
Angel Diva
I was required to wear skirts or dresses for elementary school in NYC in the 1960s. Hated them. One of the bonuses for going to North Country School for middle school was that everyone wore jeans. I was the only practical approach in the middle of the Adirondacks with a working farm where the kids were outside every day, regardless of the weather. A few years later, I was headed to a prep school near Boston for girls (my mother's idea). Skirts were required for classes when we visited before I applied. But I got lucky. The winter before I started was very cold. There was a "temporary" change in the dress code to allow nice slacks (no jeans). By the time spring arrived, the teachers (mostly women) were supportive of the idea of not going back to the old dress code. So the class of 1974 was the first where boarders only needed to wear a skirt once a week for Sunday dinner.Wearing jeans was not ladylike.
I was lucky to have a mother who both understood social norms and my personality. I was a tomboy from the start. When I started nursery school (pre-K, age 4), she dressed me in pants knowing that I would be running around and climbing stuff in the playground. Apparently within the first week, the young teacher had "a talk" with her to try to convince her that pants were inappropriate for a girl. What the teacher didn't know was that my mother wasn't the average stay-at-home mom. She had a Ph.D. in Social Work with a specialty in Child Development. I'm sure my mother was very diplomatic, but I got to keep wearing pants.