Weird 1940s advice for moms who want their boys to tuck in their shirts

1940's advice: "To cure boys of the habit of not keeping shirttails tucked in, sew an edging of lace around the bottom of the lad's shirt. There'll be no more shirttails showing." (Via Kitsch-Slapped )

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Anonymous

so, the cure for sagging pants in 2010 could be to make these young wannabe gangsters wear panties. ;)
Anonymous

“Mom, you have to put it around the sleeve cuffs too, or it won’t match.”
Anonymous

No, Psychology 101 teaches me that this is called positive punishment. Adding something unpleasant to reduce the target behaviour. :)
ElfSternberg

What? But Billy looks faaabulous.

I’d totally wear that. With my Utilitkilt.
Sequoia

I saw and reposted this image a few days ago. Unable to recall where I found it I thought “it must have been on boingboing. Yeah, that’s the ticket!” Ahh the Internet: Where Everything is Eventually True.
Anonymous

Why not just write KICK ME near the hem with a permanent marker?
marksgelter

Now, if we can only get moms today doing this to the TOP edges of boxers . . .
- GeekMan
  
  Sir, I nominate you for president.
Anonymous

Transphobic much?
Anonymous

and thus rock’n'roll was born
Naberius

People in this era also believed that male homosexuality was caused by the influence of domineering mothers. Now we can see why.
Yana

I was told by some random person to tuck in my shirt while during my six month stay at Catholic School in 1988. I’ve never tucked my shirt in since, not even at my wedding. They had to photoshop the photos to make them presentable to relatives who failed to attend.
Drhaggis

One of the unpopular kids would have an un-tucked shirt tail, and be mocked mercilessly, and never let it happen again.

Later, one of the cool kids would do the same, and start a fad. Kids would be begging their mom to sew lace on their shirts.

Trying to fit in, the unpopular kids will un-tuck their tails, only to be ridiculed for being a joiner/poser/wannabe.

And thus fashion continues.
Omir the Storyteller

My mother once threatened to do this. Fortunately I figured out that if she did I’d be able to rip it out.
okcalvin

A friend of mine, who was a junior high principal at the time, used to keep a huge spool of wide pink ribbon in his desk drawer. Whenever a student was saggin’ his britches and showing off his joe boxers, he’d cut a length of the ribbon, and rig up a belt and suspenders of it to keep the boy’s pants up. He’d have to wear it the rest of the day. Never would have a problem with a kid after that treatment.
cyberscythe

So I guess the equivalent thing to do with today’s kids is to sew pink lace on the tops of boy’s underpants, so that they finally keep their pants above their waist?
Anonymous

From the voluminous “how to operate human beings as if they are tools for you to use” handbook, i suppose.

is anyone else disgusted at the idea that a mother would coerce her child to behave in a way that he didn’t want to? wouldn’t it make more sense to SHOW the child WHY he should keep himself looking neat?
Robotech_Master

Well, I guess that explains how Liberace got started…
- Ugly Canuck
  
  Liberace?!
  
  Now there’s one act the appeal of which has forever escaped me!
  But – IMO unfathomably – he was super popular:
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dioRwB4RvrQ
  
  …I suppose, despite all the excess (and much like Elvis Presley) Liberace has one saving grace: he actually was a musician. And not entirely without talent as such, I suppose.
  
  But his charm does escape me.
Anonymous

Kind of really want to do this to my plain old button downs now!
unit_1421

Anyone else seeing the not-so-subtle pathological hatred of men in the subtext of this “solution?”
- sbarnes2
  
  No, I agree with Godfree. If anything being lady-like is used to disgrace the boy into behaving. If women really hated men that much, they’d just sew them into their clothes!
  
  And if the boy was a smart alec, he could stick safety pins in his pockets and tuck the lace up after he was out!
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Or he could just retaliate with lots and lots of crusty socks.
- GeekMan
  
  No?
- MrJM
  
  I don’t see it.
  
  And I hate everybody.
- Godfree
  
  No, but I can see an argument going the other way. Lace = femininity = women = BAD.
  - DoctressJulia
    
    THIS. That’s what I thought of immediately.
Anonymous

Seems you’ve all forgotten Psychology 101. This is Passive/Aggressive behavior!
Bitgod

Well someone is a fancy lad!
Anonymous

Firstly, that’s some pretty snazzy lace. Seriously, where can I get some?
Secondly, is it not slightly sexist (for women… …sew…)- I happen to know lots of men that sew.
Anonymous

Let’s hope we get to the point where girly things can’t be used to punish or taunt boys any more because there is no stigma attached to non-gender-conform behavior on either side.
SamSam

This is brilliant! Mostly it makes me think of how economic policy makers use incentives to push people and companies to (occasionally) do the right thing (sometimes the incentives work the other way, of course). Rather than forcing the boy to tuck in his shirt with spankings and what-not, this solutions simply provides a strong disincentive for doing so. It’s like an extra tax on untucked shirts.
Anonymous

My mother once painted my fingernails with a hot pepper extract designed to keep kids from biting their fingernails.

I, however, liked the taste.
- teapot
  
  My mother once painted my fingernails with a hot pepper extract designed to keep kids from biting their fingernails.
  
  Me too… problem was that I can read. They make that stuff water soluble, which is a bit silly if you are trying to stop a kid doing something.
- Anonymous
  
  My parents did this to my sister with hot sauce when she was a baby because she’d always suck her thumb. Same result.
bardfinn

And thus was Steampunk born.
Teller

“Better to tuck in beautiful lace than to be gay.”
- Silvio Berlusconi
Antinous / Moderator

I dressed as the Flying Nun for Halloween when I was 10 and was wearing lavender nail polish on my dragon lady length nails by the time I was a high school freshman. Good thing my mother didn’t try this on me.
Brainspore

“Arr! I be a pirate!”
grimc

It’s not so much weird as brilliant.
Anonymous

that is not working on stubborn boy like me,i would not care an edging of lace around the button of my shirt
magickalrealism

This is exactly the kind of crap my mother would pull, and she’d be congratulating herself on her creativity. Sadly, this has trained me to think this way, and part of me went “Hmm… might work on my husband, too!”

As an aforementioned commenter pointed out, however, the husband is smart enough to understand basic scissor use.
GeekMan

Am I the only one who sees a sly smile on the face of that young man looking down at his lacy shirttails?

They really don’t look that bad…
chgoliz

Apparently boys in the 40′s didn’t know how to use scissors to cut through the sewing line.
- Anonymous
  
  boys know how to use scissors?
grphiw

This seems like an interesting way to inadvertently out someone from the closet.
- Church
  
  Trust me, if Billy doesn’t tuck in his lacey shirt, it wasn’t inadvertent.
MrJM

“Oh geez — did mom see Billy and me necking behind the barn?”
Kosmoid

I guess in the 40s there was no such thing as gym class.
wolfiesma

I used to work at a school with a tucked shirt policy and it was such a drag to enforce. It became this big stupid power struggle. And once you are in a power struggle with an adolescent, you’ve lost, even if you get them to do what you want, at least in my experience. Anyway, for a number of kids, especially those carrying extra weight, tucking in their shirts made them all poochy, and honestly, they looked neater with their shirts tucked out. That’s one problem with inflexible, one size fits all rules…

For some kids, the great shirt war was just a chance to fight “the man,” and when you are the man, that really sucks. Sucks to be subjugated, too, I know, but it was tough all over. I’ll admit some of the really bratty ones I totally would have sewed lace on if I could. But then you realize, not only are you the man, you are the man that’s making the prisoners wear pink. And that’s not cool. Unless the prisoners like wearing pink, or lavender, as the case may be… and then, all bets are off…
- RJ
  
  ‘tucked out’ – interesting, trying to imagine how that’d work, would you need to tuck in first?
  - wolfiesma
    
    See, that’s exactly the kind of mock-serious, smart-alecky comment that makes teachers want to cut their coffee with drain cleaner. (Burnout is a bitch. Let. me. tell. you.) But hey, who knows, maybe lace would be a really good look for you. Just hold still while I get this one stitch… :)
dunnright

I actually have a friend who said his mom used to do this on his “Church Clothes”.
Matt Staggs

MOMHACK
Anonymous

Neighbor: “Hi Madge, I see you sewed lacy on Billy’s shirttails. Doesn’t look like it’s working though. They’re still hanging out.”

Billy’s Mom: “Lace? I didn’t sew any lace on Billy’s… [gasp!]“
Anonymous

What would all of those Apple Stores employees do? Never seen a tucked in T-shirt there.
- Anonymous
  
  t shirts don’t have shirt-tails
tarehna

Could we get away with an update on this: doilies attached to boxers to prevent sagging?
Anonymous

My grandmother was always on my case about this. She’d say, “Your slip is showing, tuck in your shirt.”
skeptacally

and to keep today’s boys from having the waist of their pants around the bottoms of their butts, make them wear panties.
Boba Fett Diop

“Now I’m saucy Elizabethan gentleman!”
- Felton / Moderator
  
  Just needs a ruff and a codpiece.
CastanhasDoPara

Clever. But I can almost guarantee you that those strips would be ripped or clipped off, if the shirt was even worn in the first place.

And yes he does look rather dandy in that shirt, seems to be a little happy about it even. So what would mom and dad do about the 40′s boy that liked it so much that he never tucked his tails in?
- Anonymous
  
  Sure, they might get ripped off or not worn, but if mom’s doing the laundry, she’ll figure it out pretty quickly. It’s not about making it impossible for a boy to go about with his shirt untucked; it’s about raising the cost of doing so.
mdh

This is step one. Step two involves a belt and a backside. This was the 40′s. Nobody cried over a child’s red-ass while people were being gassed by the millions.
- Anonymous
  
  And sadly, nobody cried too much about people being gassed in the millions, either.
- IronEdithKidd
  
  Indeed. Children didn’t run the show back in the day. Sewing the lace to the shirtale was mom’s way of helping Jr avoid another ass-whoopin’.
  - Anonymous
    
    “Whooping” is a sound made by whooping cranes and dance club patrons of the 1970′s and 80′s.
    
    I believe you meant “whipping.” Or, more colloquially, “whippin’.” I’d hate to imagine what a session of ass whooping might look like, especially if it’s between a father and son. I have a vague mental image of something involving a bellows, a rubber hose and a cheerleader’s horn.
- chgoliz
  
  Who Godwins a thread about kids’ fashion? Sheesh.
  - mdh
    
    –facepalm–
    
    You know, discussing reality in the 40′s in a post about the 40′s is not what you said there. Save your derision for topics you understand.
    - chgoliz
      
      “Godwin’s law applies especially to inappropriate, inordinate, or hyperbolic comparisons of other situations (or one’s opponent) with Hitler or Nazis or their actions.”
      
      Punishing a boy for not tucking in his shirt is contrasted in the same sentence to people “being gassed by the millions”.
      
      There was no other, less inordinate comparison to make?