The short shorts affair
by Bill Miller for
the Mail Tribune
Monday, February 24th
2020
“Yes!” said the boys.
“No!” said Medford high school
officials.
It began with a fad sweeping the nation
in the mid 1950s. The sight of men’s knees was suddenly appearing on the main
streets of America. It was mostly the young; however, the Bermuda shorts
invasion had even snuck into business board rooms from New York to San Francisco.
One poll noted that only 1 in 5
Americans said they would ever wear Bermuda shorts, yet some major retailers
reported selling one pair of men’s shorts for every three pairs of slacks.
The shorts had become a fashion
statement for men and an inspiration for women’s fashion designers. The
introduction of the Bermuda skirt was sweeping college campuses. The skirt was
one-inch longer than the Bermuda shorts worn beneath it. My female sources tell
me this sounds somewhat like the beginnings of the divided skirt or culottes.
By 1956, the fad was most popular with
college and high school males, leading to school boards all over the country
banning Bermudas and shutting down student protests.
On April 6, 1956, just before the
morning bell, 30 young men arrived at Medford High wearing Bermuda shorts. It
didn’t take long for school officials to confront the boys and, after a very
brief discussion, tell them to go home and return in more conventional and
appropriate attire.
While officials huddled together in
conferences with the school board to decide an acceptable dress code, the boys
took their protest to the streets. Strolling down Main Street in temperatures
rising from an early morning freeze, there wasn’t even a shiver as they laughed
and hooted at each other for the next few hours, including a slight diversion
to the Mail Tribune newsroom on Fir Street, where they presented their case to
reporters.
Leonard Mayfield, school
superintendent, laughed when told the students were parading through downtown.
“Yes, the boys have a legal right to
wear what they want,” he said, “as long as it is within the limitation of
decency.”
He explained the school’s efforts were
aimed at educating the students to “commonly accepted proprieties and customs,”
including attempts to discourage girls from wearing shorts or slacks to school.
Just before noon, when the boys
returned to school, they told officials they had planned the demonstration
earlier that week and admitted it might not have been the best way to approach
the situation.
Officials explained that they didn’t
want to make any hard and fast rules about clothing, and they halfway
sympathized with the boys but said extreme and unconventional dress were
“distracting to the educational process.”
An agreement was quickly reached. The
boys could wear shorts as long as they came within an inch of the knee. In
addition, there would be no other extremes allowed in the length of shorts or
in other clothing.
A member of the school board, Bill
Barker, admitted he had a lighthearted conflict in the controversy. Barker
owned a men’s clothing store in the city.
“I wear them myself,” Barker said. “I
like to wear them and to sell them. From a strictly non-school board and biased
viewpoint, I vote for ‘em!”
In less than a few hours it was all over,
and the girls had won too. Occasional Wednesdays were designated “Slack Day,”
where some of the young ladies were also allowed to wear Bermuda skirts or
shorts, and even that newest of newfangled fads — pedal pushers.
The “educational process” would never
be the same again.
Writer Bill Miller is the author of
five books, including “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history
columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com.
