In 1921, consternation ruled in Burlington. Sides were chosen and generation gaps widened as a town struggled with that age-old conundrum — “what is the proper way for a young lady to dress?”
The 1920s had ushered in the “flapper” age of tight clothes and loose morals, and not even Burlington’s closeted youth were deaf to the siren call of gin and jazz.
The issue of changing social standards and a burgeoning feminist awareness would be fought out at that local institution of Bohemianism and free thinking — the local high school, where skirt hemlines were inching their way to many a dimpled knee.
The rallying cry against this creeping decay of morality was sounded by a visiting Temperance lecturer, Mrs. Linne Carl, who appeared before the Burlington Women’s Club to raise the clarion call of general damnation for all that was wrong with the younger generation.
“Immorality among high school students is greater than among college students (gasp),” warned the ever diligent Mrs. Carl. “Dress has a great deal to do with the immorality of girls and women today.”
Linne conceded that high-necked garments, skirts to the ankles and sleeves to wrist and all made of heavy sack cloth may be lacking in comfort. But, she said, such attire was still highly preferable to the alternative, where “scantiness is suggestive and this is where the harm comes in.”
Ms. Carl urged Burlington High School girls to be given “strong direction from the right channels” in the matter of acceptable clothing and there was plenty of such direction coming.
That year the National Congress of Mothers, meeting in Washington, D.C., declared that high school girls should use “no rouge or powder, no silk stockings, no high heels, no narrow skirts.” Others demanded even more restrictions and the Missouri Chapter of Mothers argues the human knee should never be exposed.
The Burlington Hawk Eye, ever alert to the possibility of a juicy local scandal, decided to have some fun with the controversy. The paper assigned reporter Dorothy Kremlin to find a typical high school student and gage her reaction to the Draconian fashion dictates and parental restrictions.
The editor’s directions to reporter Kremlin were very specific: “Get a typical 1921 girl with her half hose and Ben Hur skirt, her makeup box and her cigarette case. Get her to pose for a picture to illustrate your story. You probably won’t be able to find a costume of a demure Miss of a decade ago so we will have the artist sketch one from memory.”
Kremlin, with little idea of the storm she was to raise, began her search for Burlington’s version of the flapper girl. She began her research by approaching high school girls shopping along Jefferson Street. There she asked the girls if they would be the subject of a story on youth’s need for self expression and fashion freedom.
The reporter soon became discouraged for none of the school girls she encountered would participate in her investigation. Where were the wild, unfettered Burlington High School students flying in the face of public standards? Where were the girls dancing, smoking and wearing provocative clothes that lecturer Carl had warned about?
Kremlin reasoned that no potential “libertine” would be able to get her mother’s permission before going out as a “vamp.” The frustrated writer then went directly to the school to talk to the school administrator, Miss Ester Jacobs, to ask why Burlington girls were not on fashion’s cutting edge.
Miss Jacobs explained the high school attacked the problem of “fashion extremes” in a number of ways. One method employed was carefully dictating the type of garments that would be created in the compulsory home economics class.
“Under the direction of Miss Lamb,” Jacobs reported, “the girls are learning to make their own clothes, make them sensibly as well as becoming. This is bound to be a good influence. Of course, a few might step over the bounds and go to extremes,” she ominously added. “But it is nothing we cannot deal with.”
Another weapon wielded by school administrators in their battle against moral hanky-panky was in the gym class. Starting that year, all girls were required to wear their gymnasium “middy” blouses to school and it was virtually impossible for a high school girl to be seductive, or even fashionable, wearing a top the size and cut of a pup tent.
Reporter Kerlin’s investigation revealed that parental and school pressure was succeeding in keeping the town’s young women on the straight and narrow path. The newspaper woman was able to write that high school girls would be wise to follow certain behavioral rules if they wished to avoid censure.
“Refrain from indecent dress, give up smoking and improper dancing, cease painting your face, shun suggestive motion pictures, bar salacious literature and immoral plays and stop joy riding.”
Such rules made it easy to comply with Kerlin’s last suggestion — “get plenty of sleep.”
