El Camino Real High School in 1968, girls wore skirts or went home.
Same at my high school, until we girls decided to all wear pants to school one day in 1969. After sending about the 30th girl home, the school decided to change the dress code, permitting girls to wear nice pants in classes. The all-male football team in retaliation protested the dress-code change with a rally held in front of the school. The entire team wore dresses and skirts to protest, saying “it wasn’t ok for girls to be boys.” A local TV station sent out a crew, and the boys made the evening news. However, the girls could wear pants in school forever after. I couldn’t help but wonder about the fragility of masculine identity the high-school football players seemed to have, connecting their male gender identity to being the only sex to be given social permission to wear pants.
