Oh..my...goodness.....is it any wonder that the decade following this one went berserk?? (Or sane, depending on how you look at it.)Ah, the 1950s, when employers told women to "wear heels, gloves and hose" (hosiery) or they'd get sacked. NYLON STOCKINGS on hot summer days and voluminous undergarments to 'poof' your skirt out so that your waistline was as impossibly tiny as Scarlett O'Hara's. And those matching parasols ~ what the hell were these people thinking??
I admit it, I wore white gloves, heels and "hose" for my very first job interview in 1964. And hated every second of it from that day forward. Then, by some benevolent force of the universe, less than 10 years later, I stumbled into the music industry, where jeans and t-shirts were the accepted uniform and I was home free!
Thank every star in heaven that the Sixties came along and turned its predecessor on its stuffy ass, annihilating every stupid 'custom' in the process. Tie-dyed shirts replaced those tacky dresses. Headbands, the silly hats. Bras were burned. And the best one of all, love beads instead of those ubiquitous-ridiculous pearl necklaces. Every 1950s TV mother wore white pearls, no matter WHAT.
I have a thirty-something friend who views the 1950s as the corniest, most moronic and stifled decade of all time. I initially disagreed with him, but in retrospect, if you weren't lucky enough to be a boomer kid during that decade, he's quite correct.
And if any employer ever told me to "wear hose," he's the one who'd be wearing them. Around his throat.
