I’ve had Li’l Abner strips popping up in my Facebook feed this week.
Most of the characters in the strip wear stereotypical hillbilly clothes. But for some reason, Mammy Yokum seems to follow her own strange fashion muse.
Did I miss the stereotype that said that elderly hillbilly women wear mini-skirts and go-go boots? Because I never saw Loweezy Smith wearing that.
I can see Al Capp deciding to poke fun at a youthful fashion trend by having an old woman like Mammy embrace it. But Mammy appears to have been wearing mini-skirts and go-go boots before they became a fashion craze in the late sixties.
It wasn’t always this way. In her earliest appearances, Mammy wore a longer raggedy dress.
And as long as I’ve started a thread on this ridiculous topic, what was the deal with Mammy’s hat? It appears to be square and have points coming out of it. I have never seen any kind of hat that even slightly resembles this.
Are there square bonnets?
I’m honestly wondering if that thing on her head is supposed to be a box. Which again might fit as a parody of sixties fashions when pillbox hats were a trend. Capp might have had Mammy wearing a literal box as a hat.
Checking a Li’l Abner book I have next to me, most Dogpatch women (not just the attractive ones) have shortish skirts or dresses, usually with a raggedy hem. Presumably this is meant to indicate that they are so poor they can’t afford new clothes (and also for cheesecake purposes, of course). Why Mammy’s hem became un-raggedy over time, I’m not sure.
Her boots are usually more like work boots, however.
They look like rubber overboots.
The pointy bits on other Capp characters seem to be his way of drawing tatters. I’d interpret Mammy’s had as being a bonnet with tatters.
I have always thought that. I assumed that she wanted protection while she worked in the fields or foraged in the woods or whatver. If she is wearing rubber boots to protect her legs, it would make sense to have a short hem that will not get wet or caught on thorns.
I couldn’t think of it before: Muck boots.
Brogans.
I’m really surprised they wear shoes at all.
