Authors: Virginia Nicholson
Where would it all end? Post-war, Barbara Cartland foresaw new battle lines being drawn up – ‘I am convinced the next war will be a sex war!’
But Cartland observed that, ‘thank goodness’, feminine characteristics nearly always prevailed: ‘the old Adam – or rather the old Eve – would out’. Like Nella Last, she held to the view that ‘a woman will
be
a woman’. They were probably right. Evidence suggests that ATS girls clung tenaciously to the remnants of their femininity. In fact it was during her time in the army that Doffy Brewer used make-up and lipstick for the first time – she might have chosen a lovely new shade named ‘Burnt Sugar’, specially created, according to its manufacturers, to go with khaki. Certainly the propaganda needed women to believe that army life wasn’t all ill-fitting underwear and swearing. Recruitment posters showed glamorous women, mascara’ed, groomed and shapely. As concessions to female vanity
Jenny Nicholson, the author
of an advice manual for servicewomen, recommended ATS recruits to pack pale-coloured nail varnish (dark shades were not permitted), nail varnish remover and a mirror. Nicholson also interviewed a male drill sergeant about his experiences with the rookies:
When I put them ‘at ease’ they giggle and chatter till I want to crown the lot of them … You have to be tough with them …
I’ll say this, though, that although they don’t take to discipline – they’re more individualistic you know, and it’s difficult to get them to stand still for any length of time – once they get the hang of it and start to take it seriously, they make a very nice job of it. I’ve found that the most feminine and attractive ones are the keenest square-bashers … They are vain enough to want to look their best doing everything.
In other words, the prettier the girl, the better the soldier. What could be more gratifying to male self-esteem, particularly as this sergeant seems to have seen his job as regimenting an unruly crowd of small children (for ‘individualistic’, read capricious, or disorderly)? Women were working to pack away their female identity and adapt
to ‘men’s jobs’; but it seems that men were not yet ready to meet them halfway. Double standards prevailed: while
every troop locker
in the army had its display of Jane Russell and her thirty-eight inch bosom, commanding officers in the ATS rigorously banned even the most modestly clothed pin-ups of Clark Gable or Errol Flynn from the servicewomen’s bedsides.
In fact, far from suppressing the female urge to beautify, war conditions seem to have raised the status of titivation to a fine art. Increasing shortages of dress fabrics, cosmetics and toiletries gave them rarity value, putting a premium on anything that could lend gloss to the drabness of a woman’s wartime wardrobe. And that year, it became drabber still. On the morning of Whit Sunday 1941 the President of the Board of Trade announced on the wireless that clothes would be rationed, ‘
thereby ruining
the Sunday-breakfast appetites of millions of women who regretted not having bought that little outfit they’d dithered about the other day’, as Mollie Panter-Downes informed her New York readers. The first allocation was sixty-six coupons. Out of those, a woman set on a new outfit would have to surrender fourteen for an overcoat, eleven for a dress, five for a sweater, three for knickers and two for a pair of stockings – already, over half a twelvemonth’s allocation blown. That left no room at all for impulse buys. The second issue of coupons was reduced to sixty, which had to last fifteen months, and by the end of the war the allowance was down to forty-one a year. Regrets aside, the public accepted the fairness of the new scheme and its importance in redirecting clothes-industry workers like Doris Scorer into the war factories.
After the introduction of clothes rationing everyone got cunning about recovering and refurbishing their existing wardrobes, though it wasn’t exactly good for morale. Wearing patched, remodelled skirts, and pilled, frayed sweaters day in, day out was enough to get anyone down, but self-control faltered when it came to stockings. It was one thing to look shabby-chic in jerseys made from unpicked and reknitted wool, but how could any woman hold her head up high wearing baggy lisle hosiery the colour of dirty rainwater? And, like it or not, as skirt lengths rose in proportion to the availability of fabric, lower legs were now on view. Every woman’s account of living through wartime reverts to the theme of stockings.
This was, of course, before the days of nylons, not to be seen in
this country before 1942, when they were brought in by the Americans. After Leicester Square was hit by its first big air raid,
clothes-conscious Madeleine Henrey,
‘fearing a shortage’, reacted by bulk-buying silk stockings. It was an act of foresight which paid off since her prime source of silk hosiery – the market barrows in Berwick Street – dried up completely soon after. Madeleine’s war memoir gives the impression that London was swarming with women in perpetual anxious pursuit of these unobtainable items: ‘Etam, where I used to buy my silk stockings … closed’; ‘I was told to come back in three days’ time’. The rare consignments of a few thousand pairs were ‘sold within a few hours to women who had started to queue up when it was still dark in the morning’. If you could afford it, seedy men in bars were selling four-and-sixpenny pairs for seven-and-sixpence, but Madeleine probably couldn’t. Too often, one could only dream of lovely legs. ‘
It’s getting easy
to recognise the haves and have-nots now – womenfolk I mean – by the wearing of silk stockings,’ wrote Nella Last, who envied them such luxuries. ‘There is such an
uplift
about seeing one’s feet and legs so sleek and silky.’
But with silk in short supply or prohibitively expensive, sickly-yellow cotton lisle seemed like the only alternative. Hideous as these were, they were also impractical, according to Doffy Brewer. Less hard-wearing than silk, they needed frequent darning, and when washed could take up to four days to dry. Where keeping up appearances didn’t matter, it was preferable to go about in socks, or bare-legged. Many women also tried substitutes: you could stain your legs with coffee, onion skins, wet sand, gravy browning or even potassium permanganate (if you could get it) and get a sister or friend to draw the ‘clock’ and obligatory seam up the back with eyebrow pencil. ‘Silktona’ marketed a leg make-up advertised as ‘giving bare legs the elegance of sheer silk’. But endless worry surrounded the question of what to do if you worked in an office with a dress code.
Phyllis Noble’s job
at the National Provincial Bank was still a Reserved Occupation (until 1943), and the outmoded standards expected of female employees hit her hard. Their vigilant female supervisor, Miss Challis (known as ‘Auntie’), was adamant that bare legs were inadmissible, even in summer. ‘No one dared defy Auntie’s edict.’ Phyllis decided to give Silktona a try. Applying the cream
evenly turned out to be a laborious procedure, as was drawing in the seams and clocks, but in the end she felt proud of the result – ‘the illusion was completely convincing.’ Unfortunately, she couldn’t resist letting a couple of her fellow clerks into the secret, and soon the rumour that ‘Miss Noble was
not
wearing stockings’ was all over the bank. Her legs became the irresistible focus of the male employees, who followed her, practically on hands and knees, gawping at the backs of her calves. Despite this, Auntie and the authorities caved in, and ‘leggy nudity’ was permitted, provided it was discreet.
For Helen Forrester
in Liverpool, a deadlock over stockings was to prove far more intractable, and also exposed the appallingly sexist standards of the day. Heartbroken at the loss of her fiancé, Helen had struggled on hungry, downcast and browbeaten through the winter of 1940–41, still working for a pittance at the charity in Bootle. The first glimmer of hope for her came in March 1941, when she was interviewed for a post as a clerk in the Wages Department of the Petroleum Board, a consortium of fuel companies (she was appointed, she later discovered, because Mr Fox, the pudgy, pasty installation manager, only ever picked pretty girls with nice legs). As Helen started her new job she felt a cloud begin to lift. The other girls were friendly, and the pay was £2 7s 6d a week; she bought a pair of much-needed new shoes with high heels, with enough left over for some morale-boosting dentistry – for these were still the days when the poor paid a high price for toothache. Then in the first week of May Liverpool was mercilessly bombed, with over 1,700 people killed and 76,000 left homeless. Without warning, Helen’s mother decided to move the family away from the blitzed area to a damp bungalow in the suburb of Moreton on the other side of the Mersey, leaving her – after fares were paid – with subsistence money. She was back where she started. It was at this point that the Stocking War broke out.
Quite simply, Helen and her workmates could not afford stockings, so they went bare-legged. Helen would coat her legs with a solution of tinted wash, cheaper than make-up, which proved adequate, though in cold weather the skin of her legs got badly chapped, and she had to suffer the ribald remarks made by the male staff at the Petroleum Board. For some time the girls’ stockingless condition went unnoticed by the unpleasant Mr Fox; his secretary, Miss Hughes, was always immaculate in lisle. But one day an order was
issued. This indecency must end. The female employees were to cover their legs forthwith. Next morning two of the girls turned up in slacks. Outraged, Mr Fox retaliated by calling them into his office and threatening them with dismissal, from where they emerged in tears. Something about this injustice emboldened Helen. All her life she had been bullied at home; now here were the bullies again, this time taking over the office. ‘Let’s talk to Miss Hughes,’ she suggested.
Miss Hughes couldn’t advise them, however, she bravely promised to speak to Mr Fox. But here she hit a wall.
Written in stone, the edict came down once more. All ladies on the staff would in future wear stockings.
Back they went to Miss Hughes, this time with a stronger card in their hand. Trembling at her own audacity, Helen explained that, if the order was enforced, they would all have to resign, reserved occupations or no reserved occupations, and they would do so even if it meant signing up to the ATS. At least there they would be provided with stockings, however woolly and awful. Reluctantly, Miss Hughes agreed to try again, and returned saying that Mr Fox would see them in his office the next morning.
Helen felt ‘caught between male pigheadedness and dire necessity’. She agreed to be spokeswoman for the group and mentally prepared herself for a future scouring pans in an army canteen.
The encounter was a collaborative triumph for the girls. Helen led the assault on Mr Fox. Initially he remained unmoved; if the girls weren’t prepared to darn their hose he had no sympathy. Helen was outraged at this. She had spent hours of her life repairing ladders with a crochet hook, and pointed out that they were far too poor to waste good hosiery. But couldn’t they wear slacks, which would be smart, and warm in winter? ‘His mouth fell open. He was genuinely shocked. “Not in my office,” he replied frigidly.’
Another girl, who had not up to then said a single word, suddenly spoke up. ‘If you insist about stockings, we shall all have to find other jobs,’ she said baldly.
There was a silence. All Mr Fox’s male staff had been conscripted; he had things how he wanted them now. How on earth would he replace his entire female workforce? But the turning point came when this
same young woman advanced demurely towards Mr Fox with the words, ‘Our legs don’t look too bad.’
As she spoke, she slightly raised the hem of her mid-length skirt and extended a well-turned, evenly stained calf towards him:
‘Oxo,’ she announced simply.
Mr Fox was caught, and he knew it. It was he who had appointed his female employees on the basis of their shapely legs. Snarling with defeat, he dismissed them. They never heard another word and, though daring to wear slacks was carrying liberty too far, they all knew there would be no further objections to them going barelegged. This they continued to do for the remainder of the war, in summer and – sore, raw and bleeding with chilblains – in winter.
*
For thousands of women like Doris Scorer, Phyllis Noble and Helen Forrester, lipstick shortages and stocking wars were in the foreground of their lives. It was like some law of nature: the more war, with its demands and privations, encroached on the attributes of femininity, the more resourceful and ingenious women became in expressing those attributes. Their self-respect as women was at stake. Make-up and elastic shortages embarrassed and undermined them, but they were possessed with an obstinate spirit.
As one woman said,
‘one needed that lipstick to show that one’s flag was still flying’. Female morale required beauty. Even if you were lonely, even if the husbands and boyfriends you loved and wanted to please were on the other side of the world, you curled your hair and went to the pub, or the dance. It made the waiting and the enduring less punishing; it made you feel better about yourself. So you put on your war paint and set out to get a wink and a flattering comment from the fitters, the foremen or even the patronising drill sergeant.
Hardly surprising, then, if things boiled over from time to time.
Newlywed Kaye Bastin
was still waiting. Brian’s family, who lived near Henley, took her under their wing, and baby Anne was born late in 1941. While she was still small they moved back to a flat in Brighton. Here, Kaye made life work on her own terms. ‘There were so many like us … we just had to get on with life.’ She had plenty of friends and took Anne to the local mother and baby clinic. Her niece was
always willing to babysit if she wanted to go to the pub at the end of the road with her sister. Intermittently, letters arrived from Brian. ‘He was having a good time in South Africa. He was a young man … I knew that he wasn’t faithful, because he wrote and told me about his girlfriends. And in fact one of them got pregnant and had to have an abortion. Then there was another one, who conceived, but she didn’t have it, because it was an ectopic pregnancy.’