CSotD: Wally’s weeds
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Today's Zits scores in large part for its delightful synchronicity with yesterday's "Leave it to Beaver" spoof.
It so happens that my rant on the misappropriation of the show to symbolize a brain-dead era is not my only oh-god-here-he-goes-again Andy-Rooney-style use of "The Cleaver Family As Society Bellwether."
I have an entirely other rant about clothing and status, which centers on Wally, Eddie and Lumpy, as seen in the final (and best) year of the show, the point at which Jerry Mathers had grown into a gawky adolescence that revealed his shortcomings as an actor, while Tony Dow's character had been developed into a somewhat generic but attractive Good Guy: Good student, good athlete, responsible family member and more socially adept than his buddies but still a kid vulnerable to their peer pressure.
That season centered on Wally, Eddie and Lumpy in their senior year, and it's an interesting portrait of high school life in that era.
If the Cleavers had been called upon to attend a funeral, Wally would have been all set. He might not have had a black suit, but he'd have been able to put something together muted enough to pass muster.
And ditto with Beaver, though he might have needed help tying the tie.
Not Wally. Even when he and his buddies got together at somebody's house for a party, they dressed: Guys in jackets and ties, girls in full dresses, not skirt-and-blouse. They certainly dressed for anything approximating a date.
In fact, the concept of a "sock hop" in those days was similar to a "casual Friday" at work today: A special occasion in which it is explicitly agreed that, for a change, everyone will dress down.
Kids then had three levels of clothing: Play clothes, school clothes and dress clothes. And a large number of kids put on their dress clothes at least once a week for church.
Nobody over three years old would walk into church in a T-shirt.
So what?
So kids grew up with two important messages: One was that they were kids.
Clothing was age appropriate: Wally and Beaver had a lot more "play clothes" than Ward. June famously wore dresses each day even when she had no particular plans, and when, a few years later, Laura Petrie wore Capri pants around the house, it was a fashion statement that not only drew comment but was copied.
Ward lost the tie on weekends, but, unless he was going to do yard work or go fishing, he didn't wear a T-shirt and jeans.
In that final season, Wally often upbraids Eddie with reminders that, once they graduate, they're not going to be kids anymore. Eddie's goofy pranks and absurd schemes are funny in high school, but they're not going to fly in the adult world.
He's not simply cautioning Eddie against things that will get him in trouble: He's criticizing him as immature. By junior and senior year, they're supposed to be looking forward to entering the adult world, ties and jackets and all.
The autonomy of adult life is intensely desireable and the accompanying dress code is a non-factor. You're simply shifting how often you wear the various types of clothing you've worn all your life.
Seen any TV commercials lately? The same market forces that want little girls to hurry up and become rock-and-roll hotties by eight or nine are eager to make sure that both boys and girls remain irresponsible, impulse-driven children into their late twenties and perhaps longer.
We haven't just robbed our kids of their childhood, but we're also working as hard as we can to rob them of ever becoming adults.
And here's the second part of the issue:
In Wally's World, when you got home from school, you changed from "school clothes" to "play clothes," which might include blue jeans and sneakers, or might be somewhat worn-out school clothes that still fit.
You didn't wear sneakers to school even on gym days. You either carried them or kept them in your gym locker, with your gym clothes.
And depending on the socio-economics in your community, you could be sent home from school for showing up in blue jeans. (In economically diverse communities, allowances were made for the fact that some kids didn't have a lot of sartorial options. But those kids were well-aware that other kids weren't in "dungarees.")
You can piss and moan about how the Man was grinding away at personal freedom, but here's an alternate take:
Mario Cuomo, when he was governor of New York, favored legislation limiting work hours for teenagers. In fact, he preferred they not work at all. He would say that going to school was their job. Learning was their job. Preparing for the future was their job.
Which ties in to Wally, Eddie and Lumpy looking forward to becoming adults, but it also ties in to the idea that, by having "school clothes" as a separate category, you define "going to school" as fundamentally different than "hanging out" or "playing" or "goofing around."
School was a work place in which teachers dressed like Ward and June, while kids also wore clothing appropriate for their place on the flow chart. In some schools — mostly private and parochial — that included ties and dresses, but it at least required a level of clothing that acknowledged a divide between work and play.
We frequently hear calls for "dress codes" for school, but that's largely, I'm afraid, a case not so much of locking the barn door after the horse was stolen as it is thinking that you can cure a cold by blowing your nose.
Fashion changes are a symptom, not a cause, of this systemic change.
It would be lovely if we could improve school discipline, educational attainment and our children's entry into the adult world simply by making certain that they had the right clothes in case of a funeral.
But that funeral is for something that died quite a long time ago.
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