"WOMEN IN PANTS? IT'S AN OUTRAGE!"
April 28, 2022
Today's TV History lesson, prompted by a discussion I saw on a Facebook page this morning:
No, Mary Tyler Moore on The Dick Van Dyke Show was not the first woman to wear pants on TV. Yes, Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance both wore them on I Love Lucy. I'm pretty sure you can find some other examples of pre-Petrie panted pulchritude as well, if one wishes to take the time to investigate. Yet it was very much Mary's pants which DID become an issue with some sponsors and network execs.
The reason was that the Capri pants that MTM wore - how can I say this delicately? - accentuated her bottom in a way deemed far too sexy for TV at the time. "Too much cupping" was one of the phrases used by one of the sponsors. Eventually a compromise was struck and Mary was allowed one “pants” scene per episode - and even then sponsors were so worried about possible backlash that they insisted on checking to make sure that there was as little undercupping as possible.
(Can you imagine putting that on your resumé: "Executive in charge of checking actress' undercupping.")
Anyway, this battle has been very well documented in a variety of places. And if you go back and look at the I Love Lucy episodes in question, you can see a world of difference between Lucy's pedal-pushers and Mary's hip-hugging Capri slacks.
So the REAL issue wasn't Mary's pants; the issue was she had a sexier butt than most TV sitcom wives at the time.
Over time, the DVD writers started to sneak Mary’s Capris into more scenes. “Within a few weeks, we were sneaking them into a few other scenes in every episode, and they were definitely cupping under and everyone thought it was great," Moore once said during an interview with NPR.
And the interesting thing was that Moore’s insistance on the pants was NOT the staunch feminist stand some have suggested it to have been. Rather, she had simply wanted to give the show a dose of realism she felt was lacking in other sitcoms of the era.
"I've seen all the other actresses and they're always running the vacuum in these little flowered frocks with high heels on, and I don't do that. And I don't know any of my friends who do that," Moore remembered. "So why don't we try to make this real? And I'll dress on the show the way I do in real life."
And God bless her for it!
But here’s my question: I wonder how much of an uproar there might be if the conservatives out there one day suddenly realize that Wilma Flintstone and Betty Rubble probably weren’t wearing panties under their prehistoric frocks?
Posted by John Allen Small. Posted In : Pop Culture
John A. Small is an award-winning newspaper journalist, columnist and broadcaster whose work has been honored by the Oklahoma Press Association, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press, the National Newspaper Association, and the Oklahoma Education Association. He and his wife Melissa were married in 1986; they have two sons, Joshua Orrin (born 1991) and William Ian (born 1996).
Mr. Small is the News Editor and columnist for the Johnston County Capital-Democrat, a weekly newspaper headquartered in Tishomingo, OK. He obtained his nickname, "Bard of the Lesser Boulevards," from a journalism colleague - the late Phil Byrum - in recognition of the success of his popular newspaper column, "Small Talk." (In addition to the many awards the column itself has received over the years, a radio version of "Small Talk" earned an award for "Best Small Market Commentary" from the Society of Professional Journalists in 1998.)
John was born in Oklahoma City in 1963; lived in the Bradley-Bourbonnais-Kankakee area of Illinois for most of the next 28 years (with brief sojourns in Texas and Athens, Greece, thrown in to break up the monotony); then returned to his native state in 1991, where he currently resides in the Tishomingo/Ravia area. He graduated from Bradley-Bourbonnais Community High School in 1981, and received his bachelor's degree in journalism from Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais in 1991. The years between high school and college were a period frought with numerous exploits and misadventures, some of which have become the stuff of legend; nobody was hurt along the way, however, which should count for something.
In addition to his professional career as a journalist he has published two short story collections: "Days Gone By: Legends And Tales Of Sipokni West" (2007), a collection of western stories; and "Something In The Air" (2011), a more eclectic collection. He was also a contributor to the 2005 Locus Award-nominated science fiction anthology "Myths For The Modern Age: Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton Universe," edited by Win Scott Eckert. In additon he has written a stage play and a self-published cookbook; served as project editor for a book about the JFK assassination entitled "The Men On The Sixth Floor"; and has either published or posted on the Internet a number of essays, stories and poems.
He has also won writing awards from the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the National Library of Poetry. He is a past president of the Johnston County Chamber of Commerce in Tishomingo; was a charter member and past president of the Johnston County Reading Council, the local literacy advocacy and "friends of the library" organization; served as Johnston County's first-ever Americans with Disabilities Act coordinator in 1994-95; served two terms as chairman of the Johnston County (OK) Democratic Party; and has taught journalism classes for local Boy Scout Merit Badge Fairs. He is a member of the New Wold Newton Meteorics Society.
