Gym knickers...
Sandy Gent recalls the days when our school PE kit was a whole different ball game!
hese days, you can guess most T women’s age by asking them the question – what colour were your gym knickers? Anyone born after the midSeventies might recoil in horror at the idea, but us older ladies will probably respond with a simple ‘French navy,’ ‘burgundy,’ or even ‘donkey brown!’.
When we were little girls, these voluminous briefs always seemed massive. They were made of thick, scratchy cotton and reinforced elastic secured them at the waist and the top of the legs.
In my day, that’s all some primary school youngsters wore for ‘PT’ as it was often called then. You tucked your shirt or top into them and even in winter it was all that was required! Sometimes we were allowed to wear cotton shorts and on our feet we had black plimsolls, daps or pumps, as they were called, depending on which part of the country you came from!
We all had a simple drawstring PE bag which hung on the back of our chair in the classroom. I don’t remember bringing it home much to be washed and so by the end of each school term the aroma in the changing rooms must have been quite something!
It became a bit more regimented once we moved up to secondary school. Then, more structured PE lessons were compulsory and for us girls, the uniform dictated we wear these voluminous, bloomers in our school colours.
At my school we had to wear two pairs of knickers – white ones underneath the thicker coloured version, and then for games, we had to wear heavy twill culottes. How were we supposed to run in them? They were most uncomfortable and it may well account for some of the unpopularity of games and gym lessons for many of us who endured lacklustre sessions in cold and dreary halls and muddy fields.
By the mid-Sixties if you played for a school team you were encouraged to invest in one of the new ‘tracksuits’ that were becoming fashionable. When they first came on the scene, these were made of the newly invented Bri-Nylon – not very sweet smelling after days of repeated use and being bundled up in a drawstring bag! The other sports wear of the time were airtex blouses. I think they were supposed to allow the air to circulate and allow for freedom of movement, but that was no good if you were well-endowed – I don’t remember when sports bras came in, but they certainly weren’t available in my day!
When I look at the gym wear around now, I’m astonished. The nuns who taught me would have surely been horrified at the skimpy straps and figurehugging leggings that leave very little to the imagination. I’m sure modesty and being ladylike was more important than winning matches at my school. Surely we all remember that saying, ‘Horses sweat, gentlemen perspire and young ladies, glow’? The bulky, unflattering and reinforced bloomers were all in aid of protecting our modesty!
Incidentally, in case you were wondering, mine were bottle green – what about yours?
Plimsolls, daps or pumps... we felt the floor just the same!