I Want To Wear Tights In The School Play!

A Boyhood Memory of Tights - The Awakening

I went to a small village primary school in England and had a very contented early childhood alongside both of my parents.  It was just me and them, with no siblings to disturb the domestic bliss of those carefree days.  I had grown up and gone off to school without any doubts or worries.  But, by the time I was five years old and in my first year at school I had developed a strong urge and a secret longing to wear some tights - although not to dress as a girl.

Five seems a very young age to have such strong and clear thoughts and feelings, never mind to start wanting to cross-dress, but I can genuinely remember how and when these cravings started to form.

Like in thousands of schools across the UK in the 1970s and 80s, all of the girls at mine had to wear thick cotton tights as part of their school uniform.  Today, girls usually have a choice in most schools and can wear trousers if they want, but back then in the 1970s each girl would arrive dressed in dark green from head to toe - jumper, skirt and tights in the winter or green gingham dress and white socks in the summer - without fail.  Trousers were not allowed.

They would sit next to me all day long with their coloured legs beside me, and this began to my pique my interest.  I can remember my curiosity growing about why they had green legs emerging from under their skirts.  They weren’t wearing socks and their legs looked nothing like my grey trousers.  The girls at school were wearing something new.

Outside playing in the schoolyard, I got even more inquisitive when watching the girls jumping over a skipping rope or hanging from the monkey bars.  In their carefree moments playing like this, I’d get a sudden glimpse and see their tights stretching up to their waists and I understood for the first time what tights were, and why girls wore them: To cover their legs, keep them warm and look very pretty.  At five years old I reached a very definitive conclusion:  I liked tights very much, especially how they looked.

*****

This revelation might make even more sense if I reveal a a little more background information about myself to add some context.  I didn’t have a sister and I’d had no close contact with female friends my own age.  I was a little boy seeing and discovering what tights were for the first time.  I realised straight away that they were only for girls as none of the boys at school ever wore them, and I’d never been given them to wear myself; and so how you would put them on and wear them was still a wonderful mystery.

I had seen my mother and other women wearing tights before, and I had heard the word, but as these women were grown-up, their tights were proper nylons - pantyhose, and I hadn’t connected these sheer, light brown things that my mother pinned on the washing line and wore with her daytime dresses with what the girls in my little school wore everyday.

My fascination with the school tights grew but I don’t remember feeling conflicted or upset about them only being for girls.  I just seemed to accept that they weren’t a part of my life as I was a boy, and that was that.  I was quite happy to just to glimpse the girls in their dark green tights every day, as they looked really nice.  I never wanted to wear them, undoubtedly because I didn’t know that I could.  That was about to change.

*****

Within a few months of starting school a little Christmas play turned my young life upside down.  On the day of the play’s dress rehearsal we were told by our teacher to line up and collect our costumes.  I was playing a toy footballer, and had been quite happy with the part that I’d got - most of the boys in the class were identically cast - essentially as characters in the background.  I joined the line of my classmates and was the first boy to collect his outfit - a football  or soccer shirt and shorts.  This seemed fine, the right costume for my part in the play.

I remember that I’d got the particular part because of where I used to sit in the classroom.  The teacher had simply gone around the room with her finger pointing at us one by one - reading out the male roles in the play from her list and matching them to the boys in the room as she went round from left to right.  The boy next to me was cast as a Toy Soldier, the other boy on my table, Robert, was an to be one of the Ice-Elves.

It’s amazing that I can remember all of this so clearly, but this moment in primary school is incredibly vivid in my memory, even after so many years. 

With my costume on the table in front of me, I waited for my friends to come back with theirs.  I can’t describe my shock when the boy next to me, Oliver, went up to the teacher and returned to his place.  He was holding a long red tunic with gold buttons, a tall black hat and a dangling pair of white tights.

Why is Oliver carrying a pair of white tights?  That’s not right - he’s not a girl.

I waited for the teacher to call him back to correct her mistake, but she didn’t. Oliver sat down and waited for the other costumes to be given out, and he seemed oblivious to what he’d just been handed by our teacher.  I was starting to get confused.  Then, Robert, the other boy on my table came back with a blue and white outfit, with, of course, some dark blue tights.  I can remember that his tights were brand new and still in their packaging, unlike the white ones Oliver had carried awkwardly back to his seat.

My eyes fixed on the packet that was now just a metre away from me on our rectangular table.  This was the first time that I’d ever seen tights as they could be found in the shops.  The packet was like a little plastic bag, but it was transparent so you could see the new, folded blue tights inside. Brilliantly, Robert picked the packet up and put it down by his other side, meaning they were now really close to me.

This time the packet was the other way up and there was a coloured piece of cardboard on the front.  As well as some text, there was a photo of a girl on the cover, wearing the blue tights and a vest, standing smiling at the camera.  I noticed straight away how nice and cosy her tights looked without a dress or a skirt.  This was the first time I’d seen tights worn this way, as a girl would normally wear them whilst dressing in the morning.  I felt a pre-pubescent rush of excitement (yes, really, at age five!) and couldn’t take my eyes from the packet in front of me.

After all of the class had been given their costumes for the play, we were were asked to put them on and get dressed for the rehearsal.  I did, but I was transfixed and confused by what the boys on my table had been asked to wear.  I expected the teacher or a parent to come in and stop them - they were doing something they shouldn’t and surely this would be seen as sissy, like a boy wearing a dress?  We’d all laughed at playground jokes about that.

But, instead of being asked to stop, Oliver, on my right, simply got dressed and pulled the tights on. I recall that he did it expertly, and I imagine that he had a sister who he was copying.  Robert though, was stuck.  He had put on the elf’s tunic which functioned like a short dress, but seemed unsure about the packet that he had in his hand.  He, like me had probably never seen a sister wearing tights before, or perhaps he didn’t know whether to open up the new packet without the teacher’s permission.  Fortunately, a minute or two later our teacher came over and helped Robert out.  She opened the tights, pulled and smoothed out the legs and helped him pull them up. I was absolutely amazed by this, and must have stared at him for the next two minutes. 

I seemed to be the only one in shock. The other boys and girls in the class carried on getting ready and no one mentioned anything about the fact that there were boys wearing tights.  

I quickly grasped what had just happened, that it was ok for them to wear them today because it was just for the play.  We were pretending, and so the normal rules about clothes had been forgotten. I went home that night with one thought in my mind - would I be chosen to wear them next?  I prayed that I would, so that I would get to wear some tights myself.

*****

That day in 1976 was a turning point as I realised for the first time that I could wear tights.  It was possible and I didn’t have to be a girl to wear them - boys were allowed to wear them too - but only in a play.  If a new school play came along I would be allowed to wear tights in front of everyone and nobody would care.  I just needed to be picked out by my teacher.  But, I would have to wait for the chance to come along, as instinctively I knew not to ask my teacher or my mother if I could wear tights in a play myself.  I felt a fear of the consequences then, as now.

*****

I’ve often wondered what would have happened if I’d found either the courage or been naive enough to ask to wear a pair of tights myself, back then at five years old.  If I’d made my way to my kind teacher’s desk, and asked politely if I could simply have a costume with tights too because I felt upset and left out.

Would she have sent me home in disgrace and had a very worried conversation with my parents whilst I waited nervously outside the classroom, dreading the humiliation and the scolding on the journey home? Or would she simply have said yes, thought it was cute and brought some tights out of her costume box for me to put on straight away?  Just how fast would my heart have beaten had she looked at me and said:

Oh, bless! Of course you can wear some if you really want to. I’ve got another Snow-Elf costume here that Lisa was going to wear, but she’s poorly and can’t some into school this week. You can be an Elf instead.  There’s some new tights here that I bought for her, just let me find them in my bag. Ah, here we are, you need the blue ones.  Let me just open the packet...here we go.  Now, let’s just pull the legs out for you. Do you want me to help you put them on?

Perhaps she might just have said that, and made the next 30 years of my life very different.  I’ve often wondered if this early moment of fulfilment would have cured me of the obsession there and then, had it actually happened. 

Probably not, but it would have been the best Christmas present of my life!