The Weekly’s Deputy Editor Jo Wiles on why we shouldn’t be shocked by the thigh-grazing mini-skirts proudly worn by today’s young women.
I’m accustomed to seeing legs. And, flesh. And, pelmet-skimming skirts. As an art student in the late sixties — the heyday of the mini, Mary Quant, Biba and The Beatles, I showed so much of mine that my father’s face routinely turned purple every time he saw me going out.
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Three years later, it was my mother’s shapely thighs that were sending Dad’s blood pressure through the roof as she (and just about every other mother who had by then embraced her daughter’s soaring hemlines) proudly wore a Pucci mini to my first wedding.
Fast forward sixteen years into the late eighties and legs were once again front and centre, however, this time it was me who was blushing and cringing with embarrassment at the eye-popping length of exposed leg my daughter showed whenever she and I went shopping. If her perfect legs weren’t encased in ripped black stockings under a tartan mini (her short-lived punk phase) they were screaming look at me in stars-and-stripes hot pants. Kylie’s gold hotpants had nothing on these.
I mention all this by way of background because on Saturday night I found myself in Kings Cross at half past midnight surrounded by a sea of legs. An ocean of thighs. One minute I was eating tapas and socking away the Sangria and the next, I was dodging hundreds and hundreds of pairs of legs — all teetering on Posh Spice heels with scarcely a skirt between them. Talk about deja vu.
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These girls weren’t sluts or ‘skanks’ as other women so ungenerously label them. They weren’t streetwalkers. They were daughters and sisters and girls next door out to have a good time; confident in their bodies, celebrating their sexiness and freedom to wear whatever they want — even if it is freezing and mum and dad and others disapprove — because, hey, it’s fashion. And, next season it will be something else — the maxi, the high waist, the low-rider, the whatever.
It got me thinking that legs — in all shapes sizes and lengths — aren’t such a bad thing because, let’s face it, nothing could be as bad as being surrounded by an ocean of leg-warmers.
Your say: What do you think about today’s fashion for micro-minis?
Video: Too-slutty fashion
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