Wardrobe Malfunction

When I was 15, my friends and I auditioned to be in a short play – a spoof on the story of John Smith and Pocahontas combined with Cinderella. My brother got the juicy part of an English settler on the ocean voyage with the memorable lines, “I have the urge to regurge” and “Hey Jack, scrape the barnacles off my back!” An older girl got the part of Pocahontas and the other female parts were for Pocahontas’ homely sisters. We passed on those roles so my friends and I jumped at the chance to be ”Indian Moonbeam Dancers.” It was going to be SO COOL with us dancing in white dresses under a “black light.” This was 1967 when anything psychedelic was in.

The whole production was done entirely by volunteers. Our director’s day job was a counselor at the local reform school for teenage boys. She viewed the world through rose-colored glasses and had a heart as big as the moon. She got the brilliant idea that we could perform the dress rehearsal for the reform school boys since they didn’t get out much….only when they escaped. Surely our performance would brighten their cheerless lives.

We dancers were a little nervous when we saw the barbed wire around the perimeter of the school. Our dressing room was a classroom with no shades on the windows. We put on our costumes for the first time, taking turns crouching behind a portable chalkboard for cover. We were a little disappointed in our costumes. Our Indian squaw dresses were simple shapless shifts with a fringed hem and cap sleeves fashioned from donated white bedsheets. We were promised white moccasins but ended up with “one size fits all” white cloth bags that had to be tied around the ankle to keep them on our feet. It was our feet that first discovered how treadbare the donated sheets were. A couple of pirouettes and our feet were in flapping rags. Our costumes were topped off with a white headband and a 12 inch turkey feather that had been dipped in some sulfurous smelling white chemical that glowed in the dark.

When it was time for the performance, we waited off stage. On cue, we came twirling from behind the 6 ft diameter moon prop as the stage lights went down and the black light was turned on. Our audience went wild with whoops and whistling. It was pure pandemonium. Towards the end of our performance, spitwads were flying up onto the stage. My friend Joan got hit with a slimy one. Gradually, the moonbeam dancers twirled back behind the moon leaving me alone to perform the climax movement of the dance with outstretched arms. There I was an open target, in fear of getting hit with a spitwad. Somehow I managed to escape that terrible fate.

Back in the dressing room after the performance, the director called us all together and said, “Girls, you need to make sure you wear a full slip at our next performance. Under the black light, your bras and half slips were glowing bright under your thin costumes…..and a few of you weren’t wearing even a half slip so the guys saw dancing bras and panties.” I guess what we had was an “undress rehearsal.”

The experience reminded me of a popular Maidenform bra ad campaign of that era.




“I dreamed I entertained the “bad boys” in my Maidenform bra.”