Up until the 20th century, women kept their legs hidden under long skirts. Often they also hid the shape of their legs with wide, flowing skirts. Even showing a hint of ankle was scandalous. Then the flappers of the Roaring '20s declared their freedom by wearing skirts they could dance in, and the 1960s saw hemlines soar above the knees with the miniskirt.
It was no coincidence that miniskirts came with Baby Boomers, the Pill, and second-wave feminism. The freedom to show one's legs was just one of the many freedoms young people in the 1960s wanted to assert. While young people loved the miniskirt, others were scandalized, but the fashion was just one more thing to bemoan about a younger generation that was full of things to bemoan. And while the trend of miniskirts eventually died down, if not out, it wasn't just a matter of hemline height that did them in. Read about the rise and fall, so to speak, of the miniskirt at The Saturday Evening Post. -via Damn Interesting
(Image credit: Ed Uthman)
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