The strongest memories that I have about the clothes I wore as a boy was the short pants I wore. My parents insisted on short pants, even whem my friends and school mates were wearing long pants--often jeans. I have pondered why they were so insistent on short pants. I think it was primarily their family background.

I think my parents insisted on short pants because they had definite ideas on propriety. Both my parents grew up in circumstances where there were family memories of being higher up the social and economic scale. The fear of "sinking" which Orwell dissected so brilliantly in a British context leads to excessive emphasis on appearances.

Mom and the South

My mother came from an old, upper-crust South Carolina family; they had these Falknerian memories of the Civil War and all that they had lost. For such people, it is very critical that everyone know that you are not white trash, even if you're hurting for money, as so many were in the 30s, when my mother was growing up.

There was a very clear class distincton in the south in the way children dressed (there's a reference to that in to Kill a Mockingbird); nice little boys wore white suits with kneelength shorts, shoes, and socks. I don't know for sure that my mother's brother dressed that way, but I'd be willing to bet more than even money. That's where she got the idea that nice boys wore short pants; having married a struggling young academic, keeping up appearances is still almost pathologically important to her.

Dad and the Mayflower

My father did not wear short pants as a boy, but he too had childhoold experiences of "slipping". His mother came from old New England/Upper New York State stock (Mayflower ancestors). When she moved to Minnesota as a young teacher and fell in love with an Irish immigrant, my great-grandfather tried to stop the wedding, although he finally relented, party because my grandfather was not poor, working-class Catholic, but middle-class Church-of-Ireland. Nonetheless, they lived in Hibbing Minnesota, a raw mining town in the 1920s, and my grandmother knew she had come down in the world.

My father did tell me that he got to be friends with boys from a quite rich family up the street (they were mine owners or something), and that when he was invited for lunch, my grandmother was very nervous that his manners were inadequate, and he was drilled on napkin holding, finger bowls, and the like. And something very important--those rich boys (in the summertime, of course) wore short pants!

Keeping Up Appearances

So both my parents were inclined, I think, to view short pants as one of the many tools they could use to forestall "creeping proletarianization" -- a lifelong effort, as my father didn't make much money. They both put a tremendous emphasis on appearances and thought of themselves as superior in their tastes and lifestyles to the people they dealt with on a daily basis. They would sniff at such things as TV watching during dinner, cereal boxes on the table, bad table manners, a TV or family photographs in the living room (which they always kept in beautiful shape and never let me go into unless I was dressed in clean clothes).

The fact that other boys wore long pants cut absolutely no ice with them whatsover, because they assumed all these other boys came from lower middle class homes. I think if we'd stayed in D.C., things might have been different because I would have been associating with "higher class" boys and as they switched to longs that would have had an impact.

Author: Bruce McPherson

Navigate the Boys' Historical Clothing Web Site:
[Return to the Main U.S. country page]
[Introduction] [Activities] [Biographies] [Chronology] [Clothing styles] [Countries]
[Bibliographies] [Contributions] [FAQs] [Glossaries] [Satellite sites] [Tools]
[Boys' Clothing Home]

Last updated: October 12, 1998