A Miniskirt Imperative

Return of the miniskirt? Far out! (“The Mini: Why They Will (or Won’t) Wear It” by Mary Rourke, July 10.)

As an unabashed and unrepentant ‘60s booster who works downtown in the ultra-yup Crocker Center, I am sickened by the daily 9-to-5 parade of poor, misguided young things with skirts down to their ankles and the cares of giant corporations weighing down their padded shoulders. Terrorized by the man-hating feminist cant of the ‘70s, browbeaten by dominant males who’ve zipped them into the blue-suit cocoon, today’s young women need to rediscover fun, and joy, and spontaneity that have no purpose at all: “to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,” as Bob Dylan once said.

Perhaps it’s unfair to hope the miniskirt will restore the independent glories of the ‘60s, when horizons extended beyond next week’s paycheck. But if even one woman doctor or lawyer or engineer or Native American chiefperson dons a mini and feels that-- kick !!--that sense of having tossed aside gloomy restraints and the repressions of the tiny-minded, this nation will have taken a step back from the present-day abyss of fear and premature senility, and will once again come striding back into the strobe light of confident ascendancy.

This is not a matter of women and men, but of humanity. Our souls have shrunk, our ideals have withered, in the increasingly splintered pursuit of selfish special interests. It’s time to stop pointing the finger and saying, “No, no,” and time to form a big boss line and start boogalooing down Broadway.

SYLVIA WEISER WENDEL

North Hollywood