RSS 2.0 FeedDirty Whites
Debbie: the most popular girl in my high school class, the one whom everyone admired and to whom things seemed to come easily - athletic ability, decent grades, natural charm. Acceptance by Debbie clothed a girl in confidence by awarding her the coveted title of "cute." While wearing Debbie-like shoes and clothing meant conformity, identities could vary within the popular crowd. A girl could be "really cute" or "adorable;" she could have "personality" or "great personality."
Social status began at the bottom of a girl's closet. At the very least she owned a pair of leather penny loafers and a pair of black and white Spalding saddles. But did her shoes look like Debbie's? Any candidate hooked on the lure of popularity had better take notice of the most popular girl's feet.
Penny loafers were low-heeled, slip-in shoes with a slot for a penny on top of the flaps. Loafer wear was easy to master because only polish and not-so-shiny pennies were necessary. The popularity contest was tied more to the subtlety of saddle attire. Saddles first appeared in the 1920s as a gym shoe for tennis, field hockey, fencing and badminton. They were an oxford shoe with an overlaying saddle for support to the instep. Reddish/pink Firestone-rubber soles, bold, sporty stitching, and the slight sassy shape of the saddle distinguished Spalding saddles from other brands.
Spalding saddles did not count, however, unless you wore them with the exact patina of dusty gray across the white. Up-to-standard dirty whites were evidence you had "personality." Much like boys' cars, whose mufflers were tuned from underneath to just the right rusty roar, the whites of girls' saddles had to have just the right scuffed look.
Because of the scarcity of black pigment during World War II, my mother's generation wore brown and white oxfords instead of black and white. But the stomping ground of dirty whites was not new. My mother's generation had professional service at their disposal - shoe shop clerks who dirtied up their new saddles for them. One generation later, the service disappeared, and we had to dirty them ourselves.
My freshman year in high school was a catastrophe. I had missed the news everyone else seemed to have heard: a high school girl must distinguish herself from junior high schoolers. Horror of horrors, I did not own the required pair of loafers, and my saddles were all wrong. Their brand, not Spalding, and color, tan on beige, screamed failure and weird to everyone, or so I believed. As if shoe-laced and knotted, I spent my entire year embarrassed and tongue-tied. The wrong brand of girl can have a lonely life.
Spaldings were expensive at $6.95, so I begged, babysat, and made sure I owned a pair by Labor Day of my sophomore year. Before I could untie my tongue, though, and enter the popularity contest, there was dirty work to be done.
As no one shared their secret methods, I experimented, like a chemist, until I hit the requisite shade of dirt. Every Sunday night I polished and buffed my shoes until they looked like new: the black with black paste, the white and the laces with liquid white applied with a sponge wand. Then I wet a kitchen sponge, wrung it out and blotted lightly over the white parts of the saddles until I got the proper effect. Voilà.
All this clamoring for recognition and acceptance made sense to fourteen-year-olds, especially to those, me in particular, aspiring to popularity. To my understanding, perfected dirty whites would make me eligible to participate fully. The high school experience required friends and fun. Who wouldn't want to be popular? Perhaps my ambitions were natural for me because I had been, sometimes to an obnoxious degree, an active, talkative, and highly social child.
In those days it was customary to stroll the halls before and after school, as well as between classes. Cruising offered the opportunity to put one's personality and flirty pose on parade. The right smile won party invitations. Once we turned sixteen and had our drivers' licenses, popularity promised opportunities to date and have boyfriends.
If alternative goals and opportunities other than popularity were available for girls at my school during the late 50s and early 60s, none won my attention. In schools such as ours, where future college enrollment was assumed, girls with good grades earned respect. But a girl admired for being smart was not popular for being smart. A girl who wanted to run for class office only ran for secretary rather than president or treasurer, and she had to be popular.
Like academics, athletic achievement was important. Everyone, boys and girls, swam a mile to graduate. We had gym class every day, and we were encouraged to participate in team sports. But only boys became stars. Popular girls were their cheerleaders. There were no fans, neither other students nor parents, cheering the girls' teams. When boys needed the girls' gym for special practices, we canceled our activity and went home.
I prized competitive sports and strived for good grades, but I also wanted the recognition that popularity promised. Later I would learn the perils of that pursuit.
It was my participation in team sports that gained Debbie's attention. She and I played competitive field hockey, basketball, and badminton. As the team with the meanest birdies alias shuttlecocks, Debbie and I won a school-wide championship.
Debbie began inviting me over for Friday overnights. She had a roomy home that welcomed the customary sleep-over and parents willing to drive her and her friends into the town of Clayton for Saturday shopping excursions. Saturdays required loafers, bobby socks, and Bermuda shorts. In cold weather a girl also needed a navy, navy only, blazer.
Debbie was fun and funny and smart, and I enjoyed her friendship. Besides, she taught me things I needed to know. I learned a couple dozen or so essential expressions, like "first base," "second base," and "third base," which replaced the old fashioned and encompassing term "petting." What our parents did was embarrassing. New language made sex a discovery all our own. I learned that clothing could have secret meanings. "Only homosexuals wear yellow and green on Thursdays" and "Wearing your sweater backwards is a neat way to dress at girls-only parties." She made sure I knew that a girl should never be seen in public without a date on a weekend night. If there was a movie to see, she attended a matinee in Clayton with her girlfriends.
Acceptance by Debbie meant invitations to girls' overnight slumber parties. Such events served as safe places for a little mischief. My favorite was reading naughty magazines such as True Romance or Modern Romance. We dropped an aspirin into our Coca Colas to get "drunk." The effect was gleeful silliness, produced not by the concoction, but by feelings of derring-do. We did not explore smoking inside a girl's home. Outdoor settings, a slanted section of roof atop a girl's house or the leafy branches of a climbed willow tree, provided better opportunities to graduate beyond gagging and to develop style.
I became a content teenager, happy with my crowd of friends. I accepted boys' privileges as the normal and natural way of the world. Then, one spring, I encountered unexpected discontent.
I had signed up for the two tryouts available to girls. If I did not succeed during the cheerleader competition, decided by student vote, I planned to attend tryouts a week later for the majorette corps, decided by a faculty committee. At the time there were no rules against my plan. However, the day before tryouts began, the principal called me into his office. He told me, "You're a very selfish girl. Your selfishness has forced me to rule that girls choose only one of the tryouts."
I had missed the unarticulated expectation that girls' achievements were supposed to look effortless. Even though girls had no alternatives other than popularity to gain recognition, they were not supposed to want or to strive for recognition. I complied with the principal's decision, but I did not have to adopt passiveness as a female virtue. I had sculpted myself into the form of a popular girl, and if I had to start over, I decided, I would do it again.
Mr. Principal had not reformed me, but he had changed me. A small interior nudge had begun to push me away from conformity and toward independence. The change was as mystifying as my earlier passion for popularity. On reflection, I imagine a shift had begun in all of us. As we became drivers, the former order shifted. With drivers' licenses came dating and boyfriends and status as upper classmen. Natural development began to loosen the ties that had knitted us into our tight group of friends. There was a turning toward closer friendships and away from the importance of a central figure such as Debbie.
Naturally my path differed from the others. I attribute the change to my mother's words of caution and advice rather than to the principal. After losing respect for school authority, I gave her remarks greater weight than usual. She told me that the nerds and the shy whom I thought unpopular, lost and dull could be stars in the making. Talents and virtues lay hidden and undeveloped behind immaturity, extraordinary smarts, and pimples.
She made me curious when she advised me to look beyond the popular crowd. "Try to imagine, Susan. Look around." she said, "Who might surprise you some day with their success?" I had equated popularity with lifelong happiness. I considered that she might be right, that popularity offered no guarantees of bright futures.
It felt risky at the time, but I began to expand my circle of friends to include the brown-shoe brand of kids and found enjoyment in the breadth of personalities. Mobility, thanks to the right shoes, turned out to be a relief from conformity. I'd discovered an independent streak, and it suited me. Confidence that I could do the choosing - when, who, how much - felt right. I had expected abandonment, but I gained friends. Non-conformity became my liberator. I'd defied our school principal and learned that I didn't need cheerleading squad or majorette corps to enjoy my fellow students and make good friends. In the end, I'd learned that growing up meant questioning rules and expectations against personal standards and that accepting risk came with the task.
Despite my evolving social outlook, I remained as devoted to the dirty white look as I did to friendliness toward my classmates. Having discovered and mastered the scuff technique on my own, I treasured my Sunday night shoe polishing. It represented my determination and skill for keen observation. Perhaps, too, the ritual served as a kind of self-polish - a buffing to my own shade of independence.