When did women start wearing pants regularly?

I''m not talking about around the house or for yardwork, but full time - to church, to the market, to parties.\ \ I remember an episode of "I Love Lucy" where a pants-wearing Ethel says, "I can''t go on the subway in jeans!"\ \ Was it more the late 60s or early 70s?\ \ My mother remembers a priest who wouldn''t give communion to women in pants, leaving the women standing in line with their tongues out as he ignored them.

• Roman made us start worshiping in the nude when I came home in toreador pants.

  Minnie Castevet

• Seventies.

• Unless those jeans said "Juicy" on the ass, Ethel wouldn''t be noticed in her jeans on the subway nowadays.

• OP, the correct quote is, "I can''t go on the subway in my BLUE JEANS!"

  The Quote Correction Troll

• Probably the early 70''s. When I was in high school (late 60''s, early 70''s), that''s when the dress codes were relaxed to allow kids to wear jeans. When I started working in the mid-70''s, it was no big deal for a woman to wear slacks to work.

• Women wore pants as far back as the early 1930''s. They were not favored until the war years as acceptable attire except in certain casual situations. It was not until sometime in the 1960''s that they were completely accepted for daywear. Women were expected to wear dresses, hats and gloves for decades.

• Women wore WHAT to work???

  Joan Holloway Harris, 1963

• Girls weren''t allowed to wear pants to my high school until maybe ''72 or ''73. It was a big, big deal--unbelievable now.\ \ And no one could wear shorts--men or women. I had graduated by the time that taboo was broken.

• It may have been as early as the late 1960s, when all the hippie and Mod girls were wearing bell-bottomed pants and jeans. \ \ By the early 1970s every housewife and cubefrau was wearing polyester slacks everywhere.

• The 70s. I was in grade school in the 60s, and girls were not allowed to wear pants to school. For real.

• It all began on the same day the cane was invented.

• I wear the pants around here!!

  Katie Hepburn

• Women shouldn''t wear pants, I agree. I prefer to see men in pants only.

• ''pants suits'' in polyester for women to wear to work were all the rage starting in the early 1970''s\ \ the ''pants suits'' were often worn with a big bow blouse at the neck

• When I am looking for good-looking men when I am out, I don''t want to be confused by seeing women wearing pants. I want to be drawn to a man wearing pants. If women are wearing them too, they confuse the line of vision.

• Dumb post of the day from R13/15.

• Early seventies here in the midwest. Up until then, all our moms wore Carol Brady sack dresses and girls wore dresses or skirts to school. Around 1972 they allowed the girls at our high school to start wearing pants. The rules at that time were that they had to dressy pants or a pantsuit. By the time I started high school a year later, everyone -- girls and boys -- predominately wore jeans and most of the women teachers wore pants most of the time.

• I''m sorry, but I think only men should wear pants.

• Grandpa @ r13/15/18, isn''t it way past your bedtime?

• My Aunt works on Wall Street and they would send her home to change if she ever wore pants to work

• Until about 1970 it was bad fashion to acknowledge that women''s legs parted above the knees.

• April 28 marked the 100th anniversary of the "explicit legalization," in Kansas, of women wearing pants.

  http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/30/celebrate-explicit-l.html

• Really, r15, you get confused when you see a woman wearing pants? The women you know must have remarkably boyish figures.

• I would say mid-70's when it became acceptable for women. Obviously for teenage girls it was a couple of earlier than that because all teenagers were wearing jeans. I'm sure it was a correlation between middle class mothers entering the work force en masse. Having to deal with the whole nylons, dress up thing AND the household crap: the pantsuit became very appealing all of a sudden. And yes, the blouses with the bows was something they were telling women to wear well into the 80's (along with those ginormous shoulder pads in the blouses AND the jackets). I remember my mother getting sent mail order pantsuit catalogues along with swatches of cheap polyester cloth. This would have been around '73 or so. My mother would toss these in the trash because the suits reminded her of cheap men's leisure suits. Sure enough, the following year we got a very dykey English teacher in our school Her entire wardrobe consisted of these mail order pant suits. (One in each swatch). Only female teacher who wore pants. Best English teacher I ever had. Unfortunately she was a complete if highly functioning alcoholic.

  To Surly, With Love

• My sister was sent home from public high school in 1970 for wearing jeans to school. This was in a NYC suburb, not some outpost.\ \ In all of my class pictures, all of the girls wore dresses, at least up until 6th grade which is when we stopped having class pictures. By middle school and high school they all wore jeans to school.

  Class of 84

• Unless they''re extremely thin, women wearing pants look like shit, but a well cut dress or skirt makes any women look glorious. I didn''t understand why women didn''t wear dresses or skirts more often until a female friend told me that it was because shaving their legs was a hassle, hence the widespread use of pants.

• When Mary Tyler Moore started wearing pants to the station.

• IN the late ''70s my mother still refused to let my sisters to wear pants to school. They used to put them in a paper bag the night before and hide them on the side of the road. On the way to the bus stop they''d ditch in the woods and change into pants. \ \ Don''t ask what happened when my sister hung a poster of Janis Joplin on her wall.

• r13, I prefer to see men out of pants only.

• My mother was a teacher in NYC public schools in the 60''s and women were not allowed to wear pants to work.

• "Women shouldn''t wear pants, I agree. I prefer to see men in pants only."\ \ LOL, like anybody gives a shit. \ \ Yes, it was the 1970s. Coincidentally, "Women''s Lib" and a demand for equal rights started right about the same time.

• So why don''t men wear skirts? Why is society so invested in ensuring that men don''t deviate from what is strictly masculine?

• Women have more freedom than men when it comes to clothes.

• I did live in an "outpost" (northern Indiana) and I remember it being either in 4th or 5th grade, 1970 or 1971, when girls could wear pants to school. Whatever year it was, it was preceded by a year of being allowed to wear pants UNDER A DRESS in the winter time, but we still had to have a dress on. Hilarious. I also remember the commotion it caused in our house when my mother bought a pantsuit. My very old-fashioned dad had a lot of trouble with that idea, but that didn''t stop Mom. She wore it too, despite his objections. That was also probably 1970 or so.

• Women are allowed to flirt with blurring gender lines. That''s why they can wear pants and why it''s acceptable for same-sex affection between women. Men are not allowed to blur those lines.

• In Scarsdale High School, land of the liberals, we could not wear pants to school until the spring of 1970.

• Mary Tyler Moore began the trend toward pants with her capri pants on The Dick Van Dyke Show in the ''60s.\ \ Then pant suits in the 1970s tried make women look neat, somewhat feminine but business-like for the office when women began entering the workforce en masse. The polyester was divine especially on men in their leisure suits.

• MTM''s capri pants were casual at home stuff. Women wore "slacks" for casual wear long long ago. Men wore "trousers."

• I graduated law school in 1994. Even then, women were encouraged to wear skirts during interviews. When my (now-)partner and I both started as associates at the same firm, we both wore pantsuits regularly in the pre-business casual days, despite the fact that almost all of the women in the firm still wore skirt suits or dresses.

• By "pants" do you mean bloomers? I confess to confusion.

  Minerva Collingwood of Haughton-on-Crane, Essex

• Definitely the 70s. In 1968, a girl in my class was sent home for wearing one of the skirts that has the shorts underneath. \ \ I remember my mom wearing a pantsuit-- a long tunic that could be worn as a dress and a matching pair of pants. It was weird. She''d wear the dress all the time, but would only put on the pants when she and my dad were going to friends'' homes.

• My elementary school finally allowed girls to wear pants in 1969.

• Females should never be allowed to wear trousers, jeans or shorts. It's just so un-American and downright wrong.

• What was the centuries old objection to women wearing pants? Seems like it would have been easier to protect virtue. Pants are harder to get off whereas skirts can just be thrown up for easy access.

• It's just not a flattering look if you're not in great shape.

  http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_La4jRc1K1Kk/S9h2RbLTfII/AAAAAAAAAB0/J-aMMZtTcUs/s1600/fat-woman-zipping-up-pants-2.jpg

• I recall an episode of Downton Abby where the youngest girl comes to dinner in a long gown over what looked like harem pants (bloomers, I presume) That was Season 1. The Grand, which takes place in the twenties, has a scene with an older woman coming down to a party with bloomers on under her flapper style gown. It was still shocking then I think by the thirties women were wearing slacks that were very loose and had a flattering high waist.

• R44 - Because when a woman wears pants, one can see her shape. In a dress, all is hidden.

• I think in America it took women going into the factories during WWII to really popularize pants as an acceptable, universal style. Marlene Deitrich and Hedy Lamarr and others wore them and they were regarded as edgy, high fashion sophisticated styles, but the average woman didn't start wearing them a lot until the WW II years.

• [quote]My mother remembers a priest who wouldn't give communion to women in pants, leaving the women standing in line with their tongues out as he ignored them. There's a joke here somewhere

• More than anybody else, Marlene Dietrich was the stimulus. Her director Josef von Sternberg couldn't get aroused unless she dressed up like a man, so he always included a scene of her dressed as a man in all of her pictures he directed. Also Kate Hepburn and of course Rosie the Riviter.

• Funny, R45. I always thought men should wear dresses, because frankly, the average man's legs look better than the average woman's. They're naturally more muscular and evenly proportioned.

• Women wore them to work in factories during the war, yet they were not in fashion as street wear for shopping, going to church, visiting friends, etc. for many years after. They became popular with elder ladies as part of pastel polyester pant suits worn out and about in retirement communities in the late 60s and 70s.

• Katherine Hepburn officially bucked the system and paved the way for women in pants. Somebody alluded to this upthread.

  Spencer%20Tracy

• *Katharine*

• Kate the Great in her pants, which were really like long culottes.

  http://heres-looking-like-you-kid.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/katherine-hepburn-high-waisted-pants.jpg

• [quote]Katherine Hepburn officially bucked the system and paved the way for women in pants. Correct, but that didn't put them in every womans wear department like they are today. It took several decades for pants for women to be readily available.

• Joan wearing the very flattering style of pants popular at the time. Wide legs, high waist.

  http://pinterest.com/pin/197032552416987098/

• My BF's mother still refuses to wear pants. But she's a refined Southern lady.

• My mother was the front desk manager of a big hotel in Milwaukee back in the mid-sixties. It was cold and women clerks would come in wearing pants suits. My mother was obligated though to tell them that they weren't allowed to wear pants at work so they would do the only thing possible, they simply took off their pants. Their jackets were all about the length of the normal skirts back then anyway.

• I think skirts are much more flattering to more women's bodies. Ask anyone who sews or designs: there's nothing more difficult to fit properly than a pair of women's pants.

• [quote] Women are allowed to flirt with blurring gender lines. That's why they can wear pants and why it's acceptable for same-sex affection between women. Men are not allowed to blur those lines. What you mean dear is that men are too COWARDLY to blur them. Women are "allowed" to dress like they want because they took that damn right. Take notes and for the love of God, stop whining.

• [r60] is right. Few women look good in pants but they all look great in skirts or dresses

• R59, that's what Nan Kempner did when she wore a newly fashionable pantsuit (probably by YSL) to La Cote Basque in the late '60s -- they said the dress code forbade women in pants, so she removed the pants & they accepted the tunic top as a mini-dress. When I graduated from public high school in 1965, girls had to wear skirts & dresses -- same thing for women in offices until pantsuits gradually became acceptable in about 1970. This was in the avant garde San Francisco Bay Area, not some hidebound backwater.

• A family friend said that 1974 was her favorite year because her company revised its dress policy to allow pant suits. Up until that point, women had to wear pantyhose - cold in Winter and hot in Summer. In accounting, I'd say the end of Arthur Anderson signaled the death of dress codes dictating skirts for women in customer environments.

• Sometime in the 1970s

• The year was 1980 and I was working in a government office in Toronto. My female boss showed up one day wearing a pink track suit. Women had been wearing slacks to work for quite awhile by then, but the sight of the track suit shocked me. No one complained about it and she wore track suits most of the time from then on.

• "Pants are probably here to stay--but they shouldn't stay for long on any but the most lithe and slim-hipped!"

  Joan%20Crawford%2C%201972

• Betty and Veronica looked smashing when they started to wear pants!

• It was a Tuesday, OP...

• In suburban Atlanta it was 1970. The school finally relented and let girls wear pant suits. Within 2 weeks, many of the girls had switched to the hip hugger jeans. Some quit wearing bras too! Now the kids can wear shorts to school, which was unheard of in 1970.

• When the dress code at work changed so women could wear slacks, a black woman told the boss that it was against the Bible for a woman to wear mens clothing.

• This is the chick who made it acceptable. Mary Cunningham, America's first big time female executive, who was involved in an inappropriate relationship with her boss.

  http://historicimages.com/images/dfpz/dfpz99921.jpg

• The Mary Cunningham story

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Cunningham_Agee

• I think during WWII it became quite common for women to wear pants. Many were working in factories and wore them there and then it just became a accepted thing to do away from work.

  anonymous

• The Bendix Affair

  http://www.minyanville.com/businessmarkets/articles/boardroom-agee-cunningham-agee-bendix-morrison/2/11/2010/id/26727

• (66) Was her name Elka?

  anonymous

• In the Chicago area of Illinois, I know I started wearing slacks to school sometime in the late 60's. I am certain that I wore slacks on my first day of High school in 1970 - and possibly did the year before.

  Cheryl

• The late 60s. I'm old enough to know.

  charlie

• All of the uncles and the sisters and the aunts, called me the Pirate of Men's Pants.

  Katharine%20Hepburn%20

• My grandmother was born in 1898 and swore to my mother (b. 1939) she would never wear pants. Until her circulation problems started and pants helped her stay warmer. By the time she died in 1974, she was a dedicated pants wearer.

• 1969 was the cross-dressing revolution for teenage girls who swarmed into male stories in hordes to purchase male Lee & Levi jeans, slim cut of course.They shopped in numbers for confidence in male stores and using male dressing rooms to put on their gender conquest male jeans with girl friends / sisters guarding the doors for privacy from male patrons.In 1970 ; every college aged coed was wearing both male Lee or Levi jeans 24/7; grossly, sometimes the exact same pair for weeks !

  Fashion Avenger

• My mother's friend owned a very popular restaurant in the 60s through the early 90s. This was before chain restaurants, when all restaurants were individually owned and owners made their own rules. My mother's friend was from Germany and could be as sweet as pie, but if you didn't obey her rules, you were out. And in those days, you didn't want to be out because each town only had a few restaurants and you didn't want to be blacklisted from the popular ones. She routinely rounded up children who ran in the restaurant, firmly placed her hands on their back, returned them to their tables and said, "Perhaps you did not notice your own child had disappeared. We found him! This is a very busy place of business, not a playground, and there is no running around allowed indoors. You may take him outside (gestures to icy, snow-covered property) and allow him to run around, yes? Ok. No more running." The whole time she was all smiley and sweet, never angry but conveying that she would not be disobeyed. In 1969 a woman showed up in a pants suit. The owner greeted her and told her she could not be seated because she was not properly dressed. "Vimmen vare dresses, men vare suit und tie." The woman said she had a reservation and she didn't know pants suits weren't allowed. They were the "new style." The owner was adamant, The woman went home, changed into a dress and returned. The owner smilingly led them to a table. Life was different back then. She finally relented about a year later when so many women had acquired pant suits that she couldn't possibly send them all home to change.

• Pat Loud wore awesome pant suits

• As a follow up, when did women stop wearing pants? 95% of women I see on a daily basis wear tights as their bottom garment.

• I've seen the I Love Lucy episode that OP references, she has a giant loving cup stuck on her head. But what I want to know about, regarding I Love Lucy and women wearing pants, is the outfit that Lucy wears sometimes where she is wearing slacks with a big pleated skirt over them, and in the front the skirt is open and pinned back on the hips to look like an open curtain. This is the strangest garment that I have ever seen. Did anyone ever know someone who wore such a thing in real life?

• OP, early 70's. Two piece polyester suits with pants for women were the rage around 1974 to 1980. With a blouse with a large bow at the neck to enhance the two piece polyester suit.

• Hillary Clinton never ever wears a skirt with a suit jacket. I have never seen her wear a suit that has a skirt - and I've watched closely. She always wears a jacket with pants. Never a dress with a knee length bottom and never a skirt at knee length. She wore ball gown long dresses to the floor for galas, and at her daughter's wedding also wore floor length dresses.

• Oh those palazzo pants were so glamorous amd edgy

• When cankles went out of fashion.

• Women should never be allowed to wear pants. It just looks wrong. They should also not be allowed to do men's jobs. The role of women is to raise children and prepare food. It's just the natural law.

• Hilary has cankles, therefore she covers them.

• Oh, screw the natural law!

  Lisle%20Von%20Rhuman%20

• R92 NOW... a WARNING???

  Meryl

• When the Seventh Seal was opened.

  LOL

• 8:07AM July 7, 1970

• 1965 You can blame it all on a 19-year-old Cher. She also started the long straight hair trend. Girls all worse dresses and bouffants before her.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DBERd61bDY7k

  Tiger%20Beat