This post was published at, and has been shared by the APHA Blog.
It is provided so you can find it in a search here at myAPHA.org, but you’ll need to link to the original post to read it in its entirety.
Find the link to the entire post at the end of this excerpt.
Be Bold! Like Wearing Pants to School
OK – despite the fact that I know you can do the math, I will set the stage for this blog post with a true confession… I graduated from high school in 1969. So you can imagine I was interested in this post on Mashable called October 1969 Hippie High School. Now, granted, the photos were taken 4 months later in time (I graduated in June) But still – there is something about these photos that isn’t immediately identifiable today as a BIG DEAL. But it was a big deal. At the time it was HUGE. That is, some of the girls were wearing PANTs to school. For some of you who are younger (like, the vast majority of you, I expect) – you can’t imagine that wearing pants to school was a big deal, can you? So I’m going to tell you a story. 1969 was a year of huge social change. It was early in the movement we lovingly called “Women’s Lib” (liberation). Women’s Lib affected everything from politics (the equal rights amendment), to social mores (sex before marriage) to health care (the easy-to-obtain birth control pill.) If you were male, you mostly got frustrated at this whole new world. If you were female, you wondered what had taken us so long. In spring of my senior year of high school, just a few weeks prior to the last day of classes, Margie, a sophomore and the younger sister of a dear friend of mine, along with a few of her friends, wore pants to school. They were promptly rounded up by the principal and sent home to change. Word spread fast! My friends and I cheered! We were in awe of those girls who were so brave, so SO VERY BOLD! As an aside, those were my days of being “the good girl.” I didn’t take social risks, and the last thing I would do was something that would get me sent home from school. I was the Pollyanna, goody-two-shoes, just short of brown-noser – bottom line – I never would have been so brave as Margie…