Figure 1.--.

There were significant reguional differences in America regarding short pants. Shorts appear most common in the South so climatic factors appear to have been of some importance. There were a variety of other factor involved. Shorts appear to have been leasr common in the Western States, with the exception of California.

South

Shorts were much more common in the south. A reader writes, "While it was common for southern boys into their early teen years, for instance, to wear shorts during summer vacation or even to elementary school, they'd sometimes be teased good-naturedly by friends or older brothers. When I was about 9 or so when it was clear that cool weather was months away, my mother told me one afternoon it was time for me to switch to shorts. By morning the long pants were gone, replaced with several pairs of shorts in my closet. I put them on, came out for breakfast, and my 14 years old brother, in T shirt and long blue jeans, looked at my knees, and started to laugh. I knew what he was getting at, and so did my mother, who just gave him a warning look. I asked my mother if she saw any shorts in Ricky's (my brother's) size at the store. The reply, "Yes, they come in all sizes," or something to that effect was enough to make my brother turn serious and change the subject! I never raised the issue of why my older brother wore blue jeans not shorts. Most of his friends wore T shirts and jeans, too, and I must have decided that's what his age group wears. It's a little funny when you think of it how some boys who thought nothing of rolling up the short sleeves of a T shirt, exposing the entire length of their arms, would put up a fuss about short pants. But we've got some explanation here.

Northeast

Mid-west

West

A HBC reader who grewup in the West, provides the following assessment: In some of the HBC website articles regarding historical boy's clothing, you made mention that wearing of shorts among American boys (particularly older teenage boys) here in the United States was much less popular than in Europe and other nations as American boys(particularly older boys) preferred to wear long pants such as jeans. In part, from my personal observations, this was/ and is still true in areas of Colorado, Wyoming, and other Western states where the culture/local economy is much livestock ranching with participation in rodeos being very much the "in thing to do" because any boy (particularly a very slender boy-tall or short) who risks being seen wearing shorts ( especially short shorts) by his peers would be labeled as "sissy". This attitude, I observed, had also an impact in these areas of my state of Colorado on popularity of such athletic events of track and cross country in high school among the boys in terms of how many of them would go out for these sports as several boys seemed to shy away from wearing the very short-cut running shorts worn in cross country and track. Those boys who did go for these sports, I recall personally, were for most part the very skinny boys (both tall and shorter). However, here in the Front Range cities and towns of Colorado from Pueblo to Fort Collins, including Greeley and many surrounding small towns in Weld County, upon coming here for training at Aims Community College in fall of 1975, I have observed an entirely different attitude among young boys(ages:pre-teen,teen, and later) in terms of the popularity/social acceptability in their wearing shorts(especially short shorts) as these boys much preferred wearing shorts over long pants during the warmer months of the year. Matter of fact, these boys (several I knew personally) practically begged that their parents let them wear shorts to school whenever the school set aside certain days in late spring for the students to wear shorts to school. While there were many boys who wore the commercially made shorts(often very short in most cases), many other boys wore cutoffs(often very short). And here, the only boys whom I never saw wearing shorts were the ones who were of the cowboy crowd and the ones who were not of the very slender physique. Mike Crawford

California

A reader writes, "You say that boys in California sometimes wore shorts to school before the 1960s casual shorts era. I never saw that, and I haven't seen that in my explorations of school photos of the 1950s. In my experience California school boys in the late 1950s to early 1960s wore long pants to school, no matter how hot it was. Preferably jeans. (Levis, please. Lee (Kansas) and Wrangler (North Carolina) were considered horribly eastern.) It made no sense from a comfort point of view, but short pants on boys were associated with prissy eastern attitudes, precisely the attitudes that post-World War II refugees from eastern America were trying to escape. The fawning anglophilia of the right-coasters was looked on with contempt by the left-coasters. Things changed in the 1960s, but by that time left-coasters were looking directly to European fashions, and not through a right-coast filter." Our reader has hit on an interesting point here. Until relatively recently the two coasts were largely separated. I do not recall anyone from California at my college (university level). I was in my 20s before I met some one from California. Thus my knowledge of California before the 60s is very limited. I think our reader is generally correct sabout the 1950s, based on school photographs. I am less sure about the 40s. Ib think that primary-level boys did wear shorts in the 40s, but can not yet demonstrate this with imagery. And as our reader explains, this began to change in the 60s when more boys began wearing shorts.

Created: April 17, 2001
Last updated: 5:35 AM 4/7/2007