Short Skirts, Stockings and High Heels

Short skirts were all the rage in the late 60's even if you didn't have 'the legs' to wear one. Jean Shrimpton was the yardstick we all measured ourselves against and back then, she was considered a very skinny example. But, oh boy, did she ever cause a stir here in Australia!

Stockings had only just changed over to the wearing of pantyhose and high heels were what women wore to show off their legs more advantageously. Now getting the right size stocking pantyhose back then was not an exact science like it is today because the manufacturers were still coming to grips with how many sizes were actually needed to cover the majority of the women in the world.

They learnt very quickly that three sizes, that is small, medium and large, among women simply didn't exist. I think they solved a few of these problems when they came up with spandex instead of nylon because spandex like its name implies, expands.

So with wearing a short skirt and a pair of not-well-fitting stockings balanced precariously on a pair of overly high heels was a recipe for a disaster looking for a place to happen for many of us.

I found my 'place to happen' on a Sydney Harbour Ferry between Neutral Bay and Circular Quay. It was morning rush hour and everyone wanted to get off the ferry and up to the train station quickly.

It was also a wet morning and the deck stairs were slippery. Down I went and landed on my knees amid a shoving crowd. It hurt but I wouldn't show the handsome young Policeman just how much because I was so embarrassed. Besides, I may have lost one of my false eyelashes if I had cried.

I had split my stockings right across both knees and the nylon hung like dead skin down my legs. I had lost the heel off one of those stupidly high heels, split the crutch of my stockings and tried desperately to get away from that pushing Ferry crowd with some dignity intact.

One shoe was 5inches higher than the other and I was hobbled by stockings that were trying to escape my legs and a short skirt rucked up around my backside trying to help them off.

Needless to say, I simply moved onto the closest Ferry seat and returned home to Neutral Bay to ring the office and tell them I wasn't coming to work that day because I had had an accident. Thank goodness for an understanding boss but I think he actually liked us girls to wear our short skirts, stockings and ridiculously high heels around his office anyway.

Black Seamed Stockings and Girdles

I’ve got a question for you. If you had to wear any seamed stockings, whether they are black, beige or whatever, held up by a girdle, would you do it? No, I didn’t really think you would. I don’t hold it against you. Most people today have more common sense.

Well, I once used to wear seamed stockings and a girdle every day and I kept it up for about ten years until I started to live in the Tropics. Then I realised that if I kept wearing all those clothes, I was going to pass out from heatstroke!

Seamed stockings are hard enough to wear at the best of times because trying to keep the seam running straight up the back of your leg without it screwing off to the side is near impossible. Every time you sit down the girdle slips a little higher and pulls the stocking around and out of shape. Then when you stand up again you can’t exactly get hold of it and pull everything back into place and shape. So off to the ladies room you have to go.

So off I’d go to the Ladies room and pull and twist everything back into shape again. Come to think of it, I really did spend a lot of time in a ladies room wherever I seemed to go. My dates at the time probably thought I had some sort of bladder problem ~

But it was simply the discomfort of those seamed stockings and that wretched girdle. It wouldn’t matter what colour the stockings were, black or whatever shade of beige we chose because they were really the only colours available back then.

The colour didn’t affect the behaviour of those stockings it was the girdle that hurt and the seamed stockings that looked untidy all the time.

You see, the only way to get the seam to run straight up the back of your leg was to unhook them from the suspenders in the girdle and take the stocking right back down again. The twisting and turning trying to run the seam straight up the back of your leg would have made any acrobat proud.

Yet women used to do it several times a day. The convolutions and contortions that we used to put our bodies through just to get that seam straight would have made any circus owner proud. But it had to be done because back in those days, grooming was considered to be a very important part of our social acceptability. Badly groomed women were frowned upon severely.

In fact, if you were perceived as being badly groomed, you were virtually ostracised from society because no one wanted to be seen even knowing you in case it was catching. Having those seams straight at all times and always wearing a girdle was considered essentials to a woman’s self-respect.

These days it’s just plain sexy to wear seamed black stockings and a girdle but it’s far more pleasant to get them off.