NO doubt, in years to come, we will look back on today’s fashions and wonder “what were we thinking.”
Some of us think along those lines already. A fashion among young men which has been popular for almost a decade is to wear trousers or shorts a few sizes too big so that their undies are exposed to the world. Some go a step further and have their entire buttocks exposed.
The amusing thing about this ridiculous fashion is that it is difficult to walk with your pants falling down and if these hip young things could see themselves from behind they would pull their pants up.
Why do they do this and where does it come from? It’s part of the fascination with American gangsters and goes together with hoodies, caps and rap music.
Inoffensive on their own, the whole package spells rebellion and disdain for authority, but isn’t that what most of us did as teenagers?
When Bob Dylan burst on the scene in the 60s telling parents to not criticise what they couldn’t understand, teens were swept along on a tide of change and the world was never the same again.
Dylan changed everything and was soon followed by the Mersey sound, The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Carnaby Street, Flower Children and Hippies. We wore the shortest skirts or flowing caftans, raffia flowers wound around big toes served as shoes, and protest, about parental authority, about the Vietnam war, about nuclear armament, about the National Party government, was in the air.
For men, short back and sides gave way to flowing locks and droopy moustaches were so sexy. Shirts were every colour of the rainbow except white and ties were so wide they looked like napkins tucked into collars. Bell bottoms were the rage and platform shoes for men and women were high fashion.
Did we look ridiculous? Probably, but there was a sense that we were sweeping away old hypocrisies and with it the morality of our parents.
The battle cry was Make Love Not War, but underneath the bravado and the exhilaration of being young, we never imagined that we were in the eye of a social revolution of our own making. It was the letting go of the strict, almost puritanical mores of prior decades and the stringency of the war years, that saw baby boomers realise that the world was theirs and anything was possible.
Anything was possible for women too and careers, besides teaching and nursing, were waiting to be explored.
But in this brave, new world, would I have dated a man who thought it cool to walk around with his bum hanging out? Not on your life.
