Girl Suspended For Wearing Pants - New York City, 1942

[IcyPeas]

In March 1942 Beverley Bernstein, 16, was sent home for her Brooklyn NYC school for wearing trousers. A protest ensued...

This great photograph shows students protesting the high school dress code that banned slacks for girls in Brooklyn NYC back in 1942. It illustrated a question in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper on March 26 1942. As war raged around the globe, readers were invited to consider the burning question: “Should high school girls, particularly students of Abraham Lincoln High School on Ocean Parkway… be permitted to wear slacks to class?”

The article featured Lincoln pupil Beverly Bernstein, a 16-year-old suspended by the school’s dean of girls, Bertha Cohen, for wearing blue gabardine slacks and a “lipstick-red sweater”. “She wore them to school, along with a lipstick-red sweater,” the Eagle reported.

https://flashbak.com/the-girl-suspended-for-wearing-pants-new-york-city-1942-414698/

[Scottie Mom]

1. Not much different than SoCal in the 1960s.

No pants, no short skirts. So I wore a “granny dress,” and got sent home cuz the dress was too long.

🤬

[MuseRider]

6. In Jr. High we had to get on our knees

every morning in the hall and if our skirts did not touch the floor we got sent home. There was also the 2 finger measure for our bangs and if our hair was below our shoulders they would cut it as they would your bangs if they were longer than 2 inches over your eyebrows.

Oddly the only sewing we did in the required Home Economics class was to sew up boys jeans because skin tight jeans were the fashion and they were constantly busting their seams.

If those two things do not point to control of only one sex then little else will.

[blm]

7. Yep.

Catholic school uniform rules.

[MuseRider]

9. Yes like that but in a public school system.

I missed having to wear white gloves when outside of the classroom when I went to the University. The year before me it was required.

[blm]

11. I thought only us catholic school girls were

held to such strict standards. I sympathize, Muse.

[MuseRider]

13. It's Kansas

you had to put your drinks away when you flew over the state. I believe that was still being done in 1971 when I started college. Verne Miller was running around the state like a cracked up Elliot Ness, especially here in the Capitol where my school was. We were way behind regular places but like you much like a Catholic church, slow to come around.

[Scottie Mom]

12. Yep, had to kneel on the floor. But...

...if you were a “bus student” and could not walk home, you got to sew a paper hem on your skirt.

Edit for typo.

[MuseRider]

14. WOW!

We did not have busses to the school I went to we all walked or our moms drove. I had to go home for a too short skirt only once. My mother was so mad at me she smacked me around and then sent me back with a shorter skirt and told them not to ever send me home again. Good ole Mom

[Scottie Mom]

15. Huge high school district. Lots of farm land back then.

If you did not walk or a parent dropped you off, then there was no way to send you home for a longer skirt.

Your Mom must have lit up the front office of the school with that response. Wow! My mother would have kissed school ass and embarrassed me in front of everyone. She was always Miss Perfect. 🙄

[bucolic_frolic]

2. And pre-Flapper they could hardly show a leg, then they couldn't cover them with slacks

Double messages equal abuse and control, even if slight and subtle.

[Skittles]

3. when I took a job in the Dallas area in 1993

I wasn't aware the official dress code said dresses and skirts for women......it changed a few years later.

I worked the night shift and regularly disobeyed but it was easy with no managers around.

[MuseRider]

4. I did not get to wear pants

to school until I was in High School and then, being a campus school, we were allowed pants (not jeans) under our skirts only if it was -10 below 0. No culottes were allowed either. 1969-1971

[3catwoman3]

5. Same thing would have happened in my high school...

...in 1965-69. That, and the horror of early mini-skirts.

Waiting for the school bus in a skirt or dress, in the wind and snow of a Rochester NY winter was quite miserable.

[raccoon]

8. Yep, the bad old days. All through my school years girls had to wear dresses.

I graduated in the late 60s.

[Ocelot II]

10. No slacks were allowed when I was in public school (1952-1965), except

you could wear them under your skirt in the winter if you walked to school. But you had to take them off and put them in your locker as soon as you got there. And your skirt couldn't be above your knees because the boys would be distracted.

[Diamond_Dog]

16. Girls were not allowed to wear pants to school

Until I was a junior in high school. This was an inner city public high school and I graduated in 1974.

Boys could wear jeans (they’d been wearing jeans for as long as I can remember) but girls were required to wear dressy pants. Slacks. Maddening double standard!

My older sister got sent home from Jr. hi school for wearing knee length culottes! A school counselor stuck a ruler between her legs to determine that she was wearing “shorts”! This would have been late 60s. Again, public school.

When I was in elementary school, if you had to walk to school in the winter time and it was cold, you could wear pants under your dress but you had to take your pants off once you got to school.

The absolute dumbest rule I ever heard of was told to me by a lady I worked with - her daughter was not allowed to wear pants to football games in college! And this was a small state college.

So stupid! Grrrrr

.