A Toffer in Pants

I don't take wearing pants for granted.

Looking back at 2024, one event that struck me deeply was watching Kamala Harris stride onstage to accept her party’s nomination as its candidate for president of the United States. It was a surprising gut-punch.

It brought back some long-buried memories of growing up in America in the ’50s and ’60s and entering the workforce as a young woman in the ’70s. Don’t get me wrong. It was thrilling to see Kamala Harris up there on that stage. Not only was a woman running for president—but, here was the gut-punch, she was wearing pants! Pants!

You have to understand that it was not always acceptable for women to wear pants. The Wild West cowgirls were some of the first to buck that social norm. They discovered that split skirts were easier and safer for their performances and competitions, something the cowgirls who had grown up working on the family ranch already knew. The cowgirls got away with wearing split skirts because they were in the business of entertainment, and their public loved the fact that they were nothing like the typical women of the time. It was okay if they were outlandish.

By the time I was in high school, I was wearing pants much of the time, although not to school. I tried it once and was sent home. (I was also sent home for wearing a skirt that was too short—more than four inches above my knees.) Fortunately there was no dress code where I went to college in the late 1960s, and jeans were the norm. I got used to the convenience of not having to think too much about what to wear. I bought a pack of six turtlenecks of different colors at the college bookstore, and they became my wardrobe of choice, perfectly matching either of my two pairs of jeans. And the bonus was that after years of walking to school in dresses, it was nice to be warm walking across campus in the winter.

Unfortunately, pants became a problem again when I traveled to Europe with a girlfriend one summer during college. On our first morning in Madrid, I walked out of the hotel to do a little sightseeing, and a man rushed across the street, picked me up by the waist, and deposited me back in the hotel, shaking his head at me and telling me that women were not allowed outdoors in pants. Not wanting a repeat of that scene, or worse, for the rest of that summer in Spain I wore a sundress, the only dress I had with me.

After college, I wore pants all the time, but then my pants-wearing again became an issue at one of my first jobs. I was a junior buyer for an up-and-coming medical device company, and I often wore a pants suit to work. It wasn’t a problem until the company hired a new comptroller, and suddenly my choices in attire were no longer acceptable. One of the first things he did was to fire me for wearing pants.

I felt like I’d been thrown back in time, to an era before the Wild West cowgirls, but as the years have passed, times have changed, and along with them our social mores, as evidenced by Kamala Harris campaigning for president in pants suits. When I saw her stride across that stage, it hit me what an accomplishment it was for America’s women that she was dressed in a pants suit. It was just one small step among many others, but still a step forward.

Cowboy lingo of the day:

Toff – A dandy, a swell, one who dresses well. “Toffer” is the female version.
As in: Prairie Rose Henderson (pictured above) is quite the toffer in her fur-trimmed bloomers and beaded outfit.

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If you’re in the Denver area…

I’m giving a presentation on Goldie Griffith for the Buffalo Bill Museum on Thursday, Jan. 9, at the Highland Recreation Center (2880 Osceola Street) at 2 p.m. More information and register here.