So I have been seeing tos reruns and im just boggled by the skirts. Its like anime fan service as you get glimpses of starfleet standard issue panties. Im sitting here thinking. How did I not notice how short they were as a young boy growing up. Like I knew you saw a lot of leg and they were short but feels like wow seeing it now. My best guess is given broadcast resolution back in the day and having a tv under 20 inches and the fuzzyness of analogue rabit ears. Maybe it was not so noticable. Now im seeing it though on HD broadcast to a 90 inch screen and its like. yowzaa!! Seriously its like a live action anime.
There’s a quote from Nichelle Nichols’ 1994 autobiography Beyond Uhura: Star Trek and Other Memories which pops up a lot in discussions about the TOS skirts:
In later years, especially as the women’s movement took hold in the seventies, people began to ask me about my costume. Some thought it “demeaning” for a woman in the command crew to be dressed so sexily. It always surprised me because I never saw it that way. After all, the show was created in the age of the miniskirt, and the crew women’s uniforms were very comfortable. Contrary to what many may think today, no one really saw it as demeaning back then. In fact, the miniskirt was a symbol of sexual liberation. More to the point, though, in the twenty-third century, you are respected for your abilities regardless of what you do or do not wear.
Important to remember that allowing women to be sexy and own their own bodies and their own sexiness and wear miniskirts was still a sign of feminist liberation in the 1960s.
I am just mad we only see like one dude wearing it in TNG.
My fucking favorite part of the early tng seasons. More men need to rock the skant. Props to boims for trying to keep it alive (also great that lower decks made it canonical that it was still an option at that time)
Hey I have no problem with it. Its more that it dawned on my that low resolution and rabbit ears made it less obvious. Also that its so anime. I mean I love fan service.
Also that its so anime.
I think it’d be more appropriate to call this phenomenon in anime “so Star Trek” considering this show came out 60 years ago.
good point.
Don’t worry I didn’t interpret it that way. I remember having the same jarring experience with the Blu Rays.
Miniskirts were a thing in the 1960s.
Let’s be frank that it was a male-gaze titillation to sell the show much like the frequency of ripped tunics and visible muscles were intended for women viewers. Both were introduced after the ‘more cerebral’ pilot of ‘The Cage.’
In any case, mini skirts were a fashion trend that constrained women and girls as much as ‘liberated’ them — Especially, as garters and stockings rather than pantyhose were the norm at the time. Looking at TOS now, I wonder if the show had to order specially made pantyhose or ultra fine tights.
While it was good for women and girls to be out of the 1950s tight-waisted skirts with crinolines so profound that they had to increase the spacing between lab benches and cooking class units (as was explained to me when I hit junior high), mini skirts meant that women and girls were constantly monitoring their exposure.
It’s no surprise that ‘pantsuits’ became an acceptable fashion option by 1970 and pantyhose rapidly replaced stockings.
Well said!
Yeah, that’s probably one of the reasons some complain so much about New Trek and miss the “good ol’ days”… women aren’t as sexualized anymore as they were back then.
While back then TOS was considered crazy provocative and openminded at the time, it now registers as pretty cringe in today’s standards. Even TNG and Voyager are sometimes hard to watch.
It wasn’t intended to be sexual, necessarily.
Part of women’s lib was freedom from restrictive decency laws.
It makes sense when you see what bathing suits used to look like.
And the fact that police would enforce bathing suit rules at public beaches
Star Trek was released in the 60s when the bikini and the miniskirt were very popular and countercultural, so modest clothes would have seemed anachronistic (well, not futuristic).
Imagine a space burqa.
just watched the tng pilot and feel like trois outfit needed an oversized sucker.
But there was a guy in a skirt just as short as those worn in the original series. Right there in the opening scene of the first episode.
@Albbi Ah, the skant. I think Troi was the only main cast member to wear one and they didn’t survive past season 2 of TNG until Lower Decks (which was wall-to-wall packed with references to Trek history) brought them back.
I missed it but like she had this head band and the skirt was like layery. felt like it should have the big sucker and skipping like the old looeny toons.
Oh yeah, totally agree about Deanna’s early outfit.
