Teen life during the ‘60s involved way more than sock hops and soda fountains, as it also included a lot of rules about ordinary things teens couldn’t do.
The wrong thing
Girls’ uniforms were tightly controlled in the ‘60s. Very tightly controlled. Many schools mandated that girls could only wear skirts, blouses, or dresses. No pants.
It didn’t matter whether they wanted to wear slacks or shorts. Neither one was allowed. Instead of simply being out of style, pants were completely against the dress code for girls. How sexist is that?
A little too short
A girl’s waist was also a problem, apparently. Some school handbooks said they weren’t allowed to show off their midriffs at all, along with wearing ‘extreme’ sundresses and culottes. What did that mean? Just that a slightly lifted top could be someone else’s business.
No, it wasn’t exactly a wild crime or anything. But it was in the rules. A girl could dress for class like everyone else, but expose a little stomach, and she was in big trouble.
The haircut problem
But it’s not like boys had it completely easy or anything. Far from it. Once long hair started to become the trend, many schools banned boys from having it. Broward completely banned ‘extreme or unusual haircuts,’ and yes, it was deliberately vague.
One student in Casper, Wyoming, was actually suspended in 1967 because he didn’t cut his hair to the required length. He didn’t go to school for three years. Seriously. He was banned from school, just because his hair wasn’t short enough.
A different door
Regular school wasn’t so regular for pregnant girls. Yes, it turns out that quite a few public school districts were happy to expel any pregnant girls with impunity. They’d sometimes create separate programs only for pregnant students.
A teen girl would still be expected to study. But she couldn’t be in the same classroom as everyone else if she was pregnant. It was quite a harsh rule. That all changed with Title IX, though, because it banned discrimination like that.
No dancing
You might not think of the Sunset Strip as a place with many rules. But it was. California’s drinking age at that time was 21, and that led to some pretty weird rules. Under-21-year-olds could go into clubs, yes, but they weren’t allowed to dance if the place served liquor.
They had to sit on balcony benches instead. So yes, they could sit there. They could hear the music. But dancing? A big no-no. How weird. Honestly, that’d probably be worse than sitting outside the entire time.
The late-night crowd
Hanging around at night wasn’t allowed either. It was even worse when adults thought you were hanging around in ‘risky’ places. The police could actually arrest you for loitering after a certain time, and that’s exactly what happened.
The police ordered young people out of Pandora’s Box in 1966. It happened during the Sunset Strip clashes. The whole case was one of the best examples of how, during the ‘60s, late-night public spaces didn’t belong to teens.
The midnight check
There were even rules about bedtime. Young women in residence halls at the University of Nebraska had a 9 PM curfew. Want later hours? Then you had to get the right grades to do so. That’s not all, though, because RAs did random bed checks on the students, too.
You missed curfew, and then you’d get demerits. 10 demerits were enough for you to be stuck in quarters for an entire weekend night. The rules wouldn’t be out of the ordinary at summer camp, sure, but these were college students.
The steady thing
Dating was a whole thing back then, too, and something like ‘going steady’ wasn’t cute. It wasn’t normal teen stuff, either. No, adults seriously got worried that teen relationships moved too quickly when they became attached. It created a new social rule.
You couldn’t act too serious as teens, and you couldn’t pair off too much either. Making it official? Definitely not. Something small, like wearing a boy’s jacket, was enough to set the alarm bells ringing.
The busy boy
Teen boys have always been teen boys. But in the ‘60s, sports were supposed to be the answer to their ‘immoral’ thoughts. They’d be told to go run. They’d join a team or lift something. Anything at all to keep a boy busy enough so that his mind didn’t wander.
It wasn’t exactly an official rule or anything, but it was popular enough that some boys came to expect it. The right way to handle himself? Sweat, discipline, and a whistle blowing somewhere.
The forbidden machine
You might not think pinball’s anything harmful. People in the ‘60s thought differently, though, because they believed the game would get teens hooked on gambling. It was a gateway to pure trouble, apparently. They banned anyone under eighteen from playing it.
Originally, many lawmakers tried a full ban, but they failed to get it passed. Imagine that. Instead of a rule against gambling, the rule was against touching those lights and flippers at all.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
