This Photo Was Taken After a Woman Asked the City Council to Ban the Wearing of Shorts in Public, Texas, May 1952

Beverly Ann Ellis (left) and Shirley Beech draw an admiring whistle from Travis C. Ihrasher as Fort Worth became shorts concious after Mrs. F.H. Wilson asked the City Council to ban their wearing in public. Mrs. Wilson said she was tired of looking at women’s “ugly legs,” and that shorts were only “an advertisement to adultery.”

(Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images)