The arguments are much the same as the debate surrounding the more contemporary Wonderbra: as a woman you deserve to have control over your own body, to celebrate your sexuality, but by using this freedom are you simply making yourself the object of male fantasy?  Miniskirts, like Wonderbras, give more excuses for exploitative pictures to appear across the Media, promoted as being about “girlpower” while actually just objectifying women even further.

The battle of the miniskirt is about a woman’s control over her body image and therefore it’s also about (you’ve guessed it), sex.

The upside

“Looking Good, Feeling Free!”
Tom Robbins, Miniskirt Feminism, article in The New York Times (1995)

The first time that hemlines rose significantly was in the 1920s when the so-called “flapper” girls scandalised first America and then Europe with their energetic dances, androgynous look and skirts raised to almost the knee. Flapper fashion rode on the back of the first wave of feminism: the suffragette movement. Due to their continued agitation from the turn of the century and the prominence of women in the working arena which occurred during the first world war, in 1918 women over 30 got the vote and the voting age was finally brought in line with men in 1928. The suffragettes were also actively working to improve women’s lot in other areas such as marriage, child birth and economic status.

Is it a coincidence that the second major rise in hemlines occurs with the rise of second wave feminism? In 1949 Simone de Beauvoir published her enormously influential book The Second Sex. She argued that women’s submissive role was a social construct and not a result of natural law. Although it took a decade for the significance of her idea to become clear, this book provided the cornerstone for second wave feminist thinking. In 1963, American Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique which exploded the myth of the happy housewife and articulated the desire of so many women to explore other roles.  We were on the way

The 1960s was the first decade in which all young women received full time secondary education up to age 15 and this produced a huge boost to the numbers of women attending the now rapidly expanding universities. Women were entering the work place as teachers, nurses and secretaries. The introduction of the “temp agency” meant women could get work wherever and whenever they wanted it, facilitating travel and wider opportunities.

In 1964 Dorothy Hodgkin won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry and Gwen Moffat became the first female mountain guide, 1965 saw the first female High Court judge appointed. From 1957 Mary Stott was the editor of  theGuardian’s women’s page, a campaigning platform for women’s issues.

There were legal changes afoot, too. In 1964 married women were allowed to keep half of any money saved out of housekeeping allowances, in 1967 they were granted similar rights to their husband in the marital home. The 1967 Abortion Act legalised abortion and in 1969 the divorce law was reformed so that either party could sue for divorce, innocent or otherwise. These legal changes are the manifestation of a social revolution that was taking place in Britain and across the world throughout this time. The predominant image of women shifted from being a wife and mother to the young, free, single girl. And the miniskirt seemed to express it all.

As women took a more assertive role in society, they also wanted to regain control over their own bodies. This is one of the most urgent concerns of second wave feminism. In 1974, Angela Carter wrote about her anorexia and how the ideas of the Women’s Liberation Movement had helped her to fight it. Anorexia is bound up with dissatisfaction with your physical being and the Women’s Liberation Movement was about releasing women from these kinds of bonds.

The miniskirt can be seen as a celebration of the female form, asserting your right to be proud of your figure and your right to display it. The famous Lewis Morley photograph of Christine Keeler (1963) sitting, nude, staring directly over her seat back into the camera lens is a striking image of a woman at the height of her celebrity (she is famous for being the downfall of politician John Profumo in a sex scandal that rocked Westminster), proud of her sexuality, confident that this is where her power lies.

Women were no longer submitting to the whims of (mostly male) designers. Long trousers came in for women at about this time and there was a move away from haute couture. Mary Quant had her finger on the pulse. She was a self-made businesswoman who provided ready-to-wear, affordable clothes that expressed this newly adventurous spirit in women.  Interestingly, her famous “Chelsea Look” owes a great deal to those androgynous 1920s flappers, except now their bobs were by Vidal Sassoon, they applied thick kohl eyeliner and their skirts were above the knee - well above.

And this leads us on to the controversial issue of sexual liberation. The rise of the miniskirt coincided with the wider availability of the contraceptive pill (1961), a far more reliable method of family planning than those previously available and, crucially, one which was in the control of the woman. This allowed women to be more relaxed about sex and paved the way for women’s sexual liberation. Well, that was the theory, anyway.

In practice only one in ten doctors would prescribe it for a single woman and it was “more talked about than taken” (Out Of The Doll’s House by Angela Holdsworth). The impact of the Pill on women’s sexual choices was not really felt until the 1970s, whatever the skirt length may have had you believe about women’s attitude to sex.

Undoubtedly, the miniskirt came to prominence at a time when women’s rights were a hot topic. The miniskirt was both a symbol of women’s liberation and a tool of it.

The downside

“Take note, girls
Our London men report that you haven’t really been given top-of-the-pops praise by your boyfriend unless he has called you a Dolly bird.”
Brisbane Telegraph, April 6, 1964

A “Dolly bird” is an attractive, fashionable young girl, the term originating with the idea of a woman as a pretty ornament.  Miniskirts celebrate women’s femininity, playing with ideas of sexual possibility, but who are they doing it for?

“The freedom women were supposed to have in the Sixties largely boiled down to easy contraception and abortion: things to make life easier for men, in fact.” (Julie Burchill, quoted in The Women’s Century: A Celebration of Changing Roles).

Feminists quickly realised that the freedom of the miniskirt came at a price, that it had greater potential to be exploitative than liberating. When a person is wearing a miniskirt you see the legs, not the person. A woman in a miniskirt is dehumanised in some ways. Increased visibility for the idea of the sexually empowered woman, striding around Swinging London in her miniskirt resulted in the media simplification of these sexy, sassy women into simpering sex objects, toys for men. Mrs Peel from The Avengers, Pussy Galore in Goldfinger, both tread the difficult line of kick-ass/nice-ass portrayal.

When Talbot Rothwell took over scripting the popular Carry On film series in 1963 an increase in female leading roles went hand in hand with an increase in sexually explicit situations, innuendo and curvaceous clothing. The huge popularity of the Benny Hill Show on the BBC throughout the 1960s also propagated the idea of women’s only possible role being a sexualised one. 

Miniskirts are undoubtedly regarded as “sexy” items of clothing. But why? And whose point of view are we talking about here? The fashion gives the impression that the wearers are sexually available – “up for it”, in other words, or “asking for it”, in more sinister ones. Prostitutes often wear miniskirts as an enticement for trade and a symbol of their willingness. What effect do these associations have on the way we view a girl who chooses to wear a miniskirt for a fun night out? Is she being oppressed by a male view of her fashion choice?

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The current rise of “raunch culture” promotes a woman’s right to express her sexuality overtly, publicly and, some would say, by reclaiming images and behaviour associated with pornography. Has third wave feminism given us the right to choose to behave like a sex object if we wish?

Looking at it in the opposite way, you could say that miniskirts are enticing because they are disempowering. They give men the idea of superiority or control over women. A woman in a miniskirt is vulnerable and exposed, and, in her disempowered state, more attractive. The miniskirt, rather than being a complete revelation, is trying to cover a woman’s body, but failing. This partial revelation is much more alluring than straight down the line nudity would be. The onlooker is tantalised - what might you catch a glimpse of?

Thus, a miniskirt is the opposite of women’s liberation, a blatant symbol of our self-imposed oppression and subscription to the male sex game.  Maybe we should have been burning miniskirts instead of bras in the late 1960s…

So, as you can see, the miniskirt is controversial in more ways than one when it comes to women’s liberation. It is important to realise that these arguments are not just those of the 1960s, when the miniskirt was born. US TV series Ally McBeal kicked off the debate once again in the late 1990s. Starring a high-flying female lawyer who dressed in power suits, the programme shows Ally and her co-workers taking on and feminising the traditionally male world of the law. Her miniskirt was her trademark. But how could she expect to be taken seriously and wear a skirt that short? Distracting the jury, using her physical allure instead of her mind, she was ditsy, an emotional wreck who needed a man and a baby – what kind of role model for modern women was she projecting?

Ally’s miniskirts encapsulate the contradictions: powerful yet vulnerable, sexy but wanting to please, playful but professional - all this in a few iconic inches of cloth.