This started back in the 70’s when fashion adopted the unisex style of clothing. Actually it started by dressing every one down. Jeans and T shirts.
‘Actually it started by dressing every one down. Jeans and T shirts.’
perhaps; but by the late fifties the corporate world had developed fashion lockjaw, banning any shirtwear that wasn’t button down and white...as if wearing colored shirts to work in an office setting not in the public eye was such an unfathomable abomination...
I saw this trend first hand as I went through school in the 1970s. In the earlier grades, even public schools required boys to wear shirts and neckties. Only dresses and skirts for the girls. My first and second grade class pictures bear that out. In third grade, around 1971 for me, more casual clothes were allowed but still no jeans or T-shirts allowed until the mid 1970s.
By 1977, all the boys started looking like David Bowie, Jim Morrison and other rock stars. I definitely had the Andy Gibb thing going for a while, with the blow dried feminine hair down to my shoulders. My father was so embarrassed he wouldn't even let me ride in his car with him. When I got my driver's license in 1979, I had to get a haircut to borrow his car. True story.
But we never obsessed on it like the kids of today. We didn't care about pronouns, different genders and all that other crap. We just dressed how we wanted to and that was that.