Rules were being challenged in 1968. This included the dress code at The Winsor School for Girls on Pilgrim Road in Boston. After many heated debates (there were students who didn’t like the idea, too radical!), the student body voted to include pants in the dress code. What could the administration do? This was democracy in action. Then came the issue of blue jeans. Were they allowed? If yes, only if they were clean; no paint or bleach stains, and no rips.
I was glad I could wear my favorite outfit of well worn bell bottom jeans to school. They were as soft as velvet, delicate, about to rip. When the knees did wear out, the red tights underneath showed through. I wore a fatigue green turtleneck that was stretched out at the neck and a reddish/orange button down sweater bought at a thrift shop in Brookline Village. Around my neck I wore a string of tiny colored glass beads that I had strung myself. The beads were sold in small plastic vials at George’s Folly; a store a mile from our house in Coolidge Corner which also sold Indian bedspreads, silver jewelry and hookahs locked in a glass case. If it was chilly, I wore my Dad’s khaki army shirt as an extra layer. I wore my long hair pulled back in a loose braid.
My class of fifty girls stood out in many ways. We challenged everything. We rejected the old yearbook model of the formal oval photos of girls in white blouses looking off into the distance next to a list of the school clubs and teams they were part of.
Not for us. We each had candid art shots of ourselves (most of which I took, being “into” photography at the time) and quotes from the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Joni Mitchell.
As graduation neared, we decided we did not want to wear the customary white dress. Ours had been the first class in Winsor’s sixty five year history to include African American students. Our four afro sporting soul mates started this rebellion convincing the rest of us that it was racist to assume that everyone would want to wear white; a traditional symbol of purity. The rest of us agreed! We voted and we had our way! On that lovely June day when the members of the Class of 1971 walked down the aisle to accept our diplomas, we each wore a dress of our own choosing, signifying the individuals that we certainly were!
A friend of mine is now the Chair of the English Department at Winsor. I told him of the non-white dress graduation. He has looked for our graduation photo among the others which are prominently displayed on the wall near the admissions office and can’t find it anywhere. The only ones there show demure girls dressed in white each holding a red rose, all the way up to last June! I’m sure ours is deep in the basement archives. A time the school wishes to forget.
2 comments:
That's awesome. Thanks for sharing those memories, Barby. You all were fierce and feisty, I had no idea! Very fitting for the time, no doubt. I love thinking of you and your classmates, dressed in your own outfits and, even more, that the administration was ashamed (nervous) to hang the photo! Amazing! I imagine, if there was a photo around still somewhere, the current administration would be proud to display the political-minded young women of the late 60s/early 70s. What a fun story!
Good going, Barb!
I think the picture needs to be found and put in it's proper place.
And then, on to the Clinic! With torches held high. Out with revisionist history. Tell it like it is (was)!
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