Women were supposed to wear a dress or skirt, according to what the silhouette on the typical women's-bathroom door indicated. More powerful forces than the sign maker for the local restaurant had been saying this to women for decades. During the 1960s women began to challenge that notion regularly. This is not to say that pants had not been worn at all by women before. Pants had served for gardening, going to the beach, doing things around the house, and playing many kinds of sports. But the housedress was standard daytime attire for chores at home, and even into the early 1960s standard women's sportswear included skirts. Also, skirts and dresses remained the rule for school, the office, the street, and evening social occasions. In the late 1950s and early 1960s women's slacks were usually tight fitting, with narrow, tapered...