I was going to write a quick and breezy column about the wonderful world of wardrobe malfunctions in bygone postcards. Dropped pants, bathing suits torn in quite the wrong places…it was going to be a high class, high tone study of the humor of previous generations.
But there was a theme that was simply too all over everywhere to ignore. The single most popular mishap in the world of clothing was the strong breeze. A high wind could takes skirts higher than intended to the delight of the passing voyeur. The tradition was passed along for generations, along with the joke about the lady who was reproved for hanging onto her hat in a high wind instead of attending to covering up farther down. (If you are not up on your Fine Old Jokes, the punchline is, “The hat’s brand new. What those guys are looking at is twenty-three years old.”)
Perhaps you think this was not a hazard in the days of long dresses. This isn’t the least bit so. That era coincided with one in which a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking. (Thank you, Mr. Porter.) Plenty of cartoonists went farther than a lady’s hosiery, in fact, and some no doubt longed for the days of hoop skirts, which offered even greater latitude.
We have discussed the phenomenon a little in previous bloggery. One theory of why the phrase “23 skiddoo” (it meant “scram”) was that it refers to a street in New York known for loafers waiting for the wind to toss up the skirts of passersby. One of the earliest surviving naughty movies is a Thomas Edison release in which an unwary young lady walks over a subway grate just as a train passes, sending her skirts up past her knees.
The gag continued in popularity well through World War II (when ogling women was another sign that the American serviceman was a red-blooded American boy).
And into the post-war world. The joke remained a harmless detour into the very outskirts (sorry) of carnal joys: a moment’s embarrassment for the victim, a moment’s gratification for the viewer. Nothing, really, to attract the eye of any but the most diligent and severe of censors.
Really short skirts and the decline of postcards in the sixties muted the joke, perhaps, and attention moved over to the equally old joke of how a lady gets out of a vehicle without showing too much of what the skirts were supposed to cover. The joke, like the weather that caused it, remains, and will probably never QUITE disappear.
It has been applied, in fact, in places one might not expect. But we can dissect the humor of this card someday when we have more space to consider kilt humor, and the various uses of the word “wind”. We are, I think, doomed to wonder just why the young lady, who is wearing one of the few styles of skirt which will NOT accommodate the joke, is blushing about.
Blogsy Babbles 