The Great Leg Show!

This article is the fourth in a series, “Revive Your Darlings,” where writers were encouraged to bring back ideas that were cut or abandoned in the writing process of a previous project. 

In the fall of 1970, there was this thing called the “Midi-Craze,” where all the fashion powers that be told American women that—in the middle of an energy and economic crisis—they absolutely must be shelling out more money for longer skirts. The mini skirt was over; allegedly the midi—a mid-calf hem that, as one 22-year-old told Life, “make[s] you look just like a French whore”—was in.¹

Simplicity pattern showing midi and mini options. Credit: ionascloset on Flickr, CC BY 2.0 DEED

The powers that be made it clear this was a money-grab. As the Vice President of Marshall Field’s department stores told the press, retailers were after “that strange woman . . .  who wants to be the first out of the hen coop with the latest oddity… we make a lot of money because of her.” But the midi was a bridge too far even for “that strange woman,” as I detail in Finding Jackie: A Life Reinvented, my book on mid-20^th-century American culture and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

The first draft of Finding Jackie originally clocked in at 150K words. Over time, a lot was let go, as the story and the writing tightened up, and I figured out how to most concisely, punchily communicate the story I wanted to tell of former United States First Lady’s life and celebrity. At the time, as I prepared the manuscript for publication, the story of her hot pants (only 327 words) struck me as one too many fashion stories and I ultimately cut it, ruthlessly tossing this darling into the trash in my race towards 100K.

However, Jackie’s hot pants have haunted me since an attendee at a book event in March 2023 asked what details it had most hurt to cut. I was surprised by my own answer: the hot pants. They appear to me now as a sequel to the book’s earlier discussion of midi dresses as a capitalist conspiracy.

Because hard as the men of the fashion industry (and they were mostly men) worked, in the words of the Boston Globe’s syndicated fashion columnist Marian Christy, to “cram down women’s throats the idea that the hemline of the season is the midi,” it just didn’t happen.² Many, many women were not on board, and they were open about their rejection of the trend.

As “Mrs. Mary Bartos—housewife—” told the Inquiring Photographer of Pennsylvania’s Hazelton Standard-Speaker in October 1970: “For some of us to wear it would make us look like a creep from the Middle Ages. And with the high cost of food and everything else, who can afford to get rid of an entire wardrobe of short clothing for a type of apparel which is neither practical nor appealing?”³

By 1971, the midi skirt craze—if ever there really was one— had cooled. Now it was on to hot pants. No one was quite sure where they came from, but hot pants were reportedly “a-bustin’ out all over” in Europe that winter and then on the runways come spring.⁴ Later, they trickled into nearly every corner of American life, to such a degree that my own mother was casually wearing them to work.

TWA flight attendant in hot pants. Anefo, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

What exactly were they? In reality, hot pants were nothing new, just “shorts revisited—all revved up for casual and city wear in the 1970s.”⁵ Short-shorts that came in a variety of materials (polyester, knit, velvet, etc.), hot pants could be dressed up or down and represented an alternative to the mini skirt. They also, crucially, served as a sartorial riposte to the fashion industry’s relentless campaign for the midi.

While the Duke of Windsor, the former King Edward VIII, may have sallied forth from his exile to declare hot pants “ridiculous,” most men were on board.⁶ The phrase “girl watchers” appears in news coverage, along with repeated acknowledgment of the appeal this garment for women held for men.⁷ A poll taken in an unnamed “conservative eastern [US] city” determined that 84% of women under the age of 25 approved of hot pants, 56% of women over 25, and 75% of men (age unspecified) “approved warmly.”⁸

The election of Miss Hot Pants in Amsterdam. Bert Verhoeff / Anefo, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

In April 1971, an especially giddy advertisement directly addressed the “girls” who were its audience, while focusing the argument for purchasing hot pants entirely on the pleasure they brought men: “Men in the audience applaud! The curtain’s going up on The Great Leg Show! It’s legs, legs, legs for summer ’71. Long legs, beautiful legs, devastating legs! If you’ve got ‘em, girls, flaunt ‘em.”⁹

Opinions swirled about whether or not hot pants were appropriate for workplaces and schools, and also about who should wear them. Popular opinion held that the garments came with a host of complications, largely due to their shortness. For one thing, they “aren’t as simple as shorts of the past,” one columnist warned her readers, highlighting, as they did, so much more of the upper thigh. If legs were less than perfect, she warned, then panty hose or body stockings were a must to give the illusion of a suntan.¹⁰

Hot pants fever elicited a wave of responses rooted in anti-fatness. In Maine, the newspaperman Bill Caldwell published a 750-word satirical column on “the gruesome news” that hot pants were being produced in plus sizes, jokingly but cruelly arguing for the establishment of an “Epidermis Input Commission to protect us from size 56 hot-panted ladies.”¹¹ In New York, fashion’s rising star Halston exclaimed, “As long as you are not really fat, why not wear them, regardless of your age?”¹²

Down in DC, during a discussion of Republican-backed programs, Vice President Spiro Agnew cracked a joke that, “Most importantly, we have to keep Bella Abzug from showing up in Congress in hot pants.”¹³ The Democratic congressperson from New York came back with a sharp retort: “I have no intention of wearing hot pants because they’re not my style any more than Mr. Agnew is.”

One thing going for hot pants: they could be high-end for sure, but they were also accessible. They were cheap and easy to make from resources you might already have. That spring, the article “Crochet These Daring Hot Pants” provided instructions for readers to produce for themselves “the look that Ali MacGraw likes, that Liz [Taylor] went on a crash diet to wear and that Jackie Onassis has already been seen in several times.”¹⁴

A woman in hot pants. Beancounter43, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Mini skirts and dresses were also easily repurposed, as Joan Kennedy—wife of Sen. Ted Kennedy— revealed. At an event held in her home, Kennedy confided to Women’s Wear Daily that her chic ensemble was actually “one of those minidresses that caused such a scandal at the [Nixon] White House,” now converted to hot pants.¹⁵

There was also the easiest method of all, as Marian Christy observed in the Boston Globe’s syndicated column: “There’s hardly an American campus dweller who hasn’t chopped off his or her tattered old jeans at the thigh.” Christy called these “Hot Pants in the rough” and, though the designer versions were more stylized, this grassroots improvisation because a key component of the trend’s success. “Instead of fashion filtering down from the salons on-high, it was the other way around,” she noted, reflecting, “That’s where the real fashion revolution lies, in turning the tables.”¹⁶

Passengers at Guam Airport in 1972. TTPI(Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands) Headquarters日本語: 太平洋諸島信託統治領政府, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

After all the brouhaha with the midi, Christy observed, hot pants “have satisfied women’s desire to revolt against long hemlines.” For, as the designer Geoffrey Beene argued, even if all women weren’t comfortable rocking the look, with the advent of hot pants, they could still be assured “their voice has been heard.”¹⁷

(For Mary Lou Baker, who asked.)

1. “The Midi Muscles In,” Life, 21 August 1970, p. 27,  http://goo.gl/nKqSEY.
2. Marian Christy, “Where will Hot Pants fad take us?” Boston Evening Globe, 17 February 1971, https://www.newspapers.com/image/435513483.
3. Phil Sarno, “The Inquiring Photographer,” Hazleton Speaker-Standard, 10 Oct. 1970, https://www.newspapers.com/image/65792422.
4. Earl Wilson, The Daily Reporter (Dover, OH), 24 February 1971, http://goo.gl/FWKEPf.
5. Janis Froelich, “Hottest Thing in Fashion,” Akron Beacon Journal, 1 February 1971, p. 10, https://www.newspapers.com/image/151579593.
6. “Who Has (Hasn’t) Bought Hot Pants,” Robesonian (Lumberton, NC), 25 April 1971, http://goo.gl/7dU0o3.
7. Paula Bunnell, “Hot Pants Revolution: Standing on the corner is worth it now.” Thousand Oaks Star, 27 June 1971, p. 4, https://www.newspapers.com/image/925130897/.
8. Judy Love, “Crochet These Daring Hot Pants For Summer,” Daily Times-News (Burlington, NC), 27 April 1971, http://goo.gl/mIAqpD.
9. Freimans advertisement, Ottawa Journal, 15 April 1971, http://goo.gl/IVLt6u.
10. Sally Morgan, “The Short Story,” Kansas City Star, 2 May 1971, http://goo.gl/4bTida
11. Bill Caldwell, “Hot Pants Called Threat To State’s Environment,” Portland Press Herald, 4 April 1971, p. 71, https://www.newspapers.com/image/848779732.
12. “Who Has (Hasn’t) Bought Hot Pants,” Robesonian (Lumberton, NC), 25 April 1971, http://goo.gl/7dU0o3.
13. “Bella Cools Agnew’s Fear of Hot Pants,” LA Times, 7 March 1971, p. 2, https://www.newspapers.com/image/384743954.
14. Judy Love, “Crochet These Daring Hot Pants For Summer,” Daily Times-News (Burlington, NC), 27 April 1971, http://goo.gl/mIAqpD.
15. Sally Smith, “Sally Says, Charlotte Couple Enjoys Evening With Kennedys,” The Charlotte News, 23 Mar. 1971, p. 8A, https://www.newspapers.com/image/621936024.
16. Marian Christy, “Where will Hot Pants fad take us?” Boston Evening Globe, 17 February 1971, https://www.newspapers.com/image/435513483.
17. Marian Christy, “Hot Pants A Reaction to the Midi,” San Bernardino County Sun, 13 April 1971, https://www.newspapers.com/image/61949799.