"Coverups" by Lois Greene Stone

Cover-ups were terry cloth capes or robes worn over bathing suits; swim wear wasn’t yet a term when rubber caps had to be secured on female heads.  Some swim caps were decorated with pretty enhancements, flowers perhaps, also made of rubber. Hair had to be totally concealed in chlorinated pools so (it was said) the drains would not get clogged.  Yes, it was mandatory.

2024. Few have ever seen a real rubber head-item originally called a bathing cap. Check, online, for the 1950's floral version with or without the chinstrap to help keep it in place; check online that these were popular and/or mandatory as far back as 1900!  Today’s ‘swim caps’ are easier to put on, made of silicone, latex or lycra.  Some believe one may swim faster as the head covering creates less drag in water than hair, providing just a possible ‘edge’ in a swim meet.

How many women now wrap their bodies as they walk to and from a pool/beach/lake when sporting a string bikini?  The phrase “cover up” is now associated with political or society circumstances. 

A sociologist today might notice that lying, cheating, doing shoddy mechanical work, and so forth, are ok until caught.  Then there’s the ‘smokescreen’ a.k.a. cover-up technique which attempts to hide the wrongdoing.

Boy Scouts of America, religious groups, entertainment industry, were news items as revelations of molesting or ‘harassment’ surfaced. (July 1, 2021, NBC News , Emily R. Siegel, “Boy Scouts of America have reached an $850 million settlement, with tens of thousands of sexual abuse victims. The settlement is the largest in a child sexual abuse case in United States history.”)

It was uncovered that some very wealthy families cheated to get their children into prestige universities. ‘Overturn’ is still a verb.

Pronouns!  Well, language and grammar have also changed.  When I taught English, a singular noun required a singular pronoun.  And, as a student, if I had to deliver a long paper and did not want to say ‘he/she’, I’d simply tell my audience I was going to use the ‘universal he’, and that was acceptable.  No one protested, took offense, felt diminished.  “They” is now allowed as a singular pronoun. How can it be that our advanced society, where gender is supposed to be irrelevant, needs a third-person pronoun that replaces usage of he or she?

There once was a play called “When Our Hearts Were Young and Gay”. Written by Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough, the book became a movie in 1944, and a play in 1948.  Be young, happy, carefree proclaimed the title, and newborn girls were often named Gay.  Word-association 21st Century eliminated the original definition of that word and probably it is now considered archaic. The list of ‘old-fashioned’ is long: who’d say ‘fudge’ for nonsense today, or ‘gadzooks’ for surprise?

Well, I’ve covered a bit without a cover-up, can’t overturn the Scrabble dictionary’s added/removed words, won’t see young females sporting the name Gay, and will sound peculiar as I will continue to use ‘he/she’ in a society that now has gender-neutral ‘they’ as standard.  In May 2023, The Wall Street Journal ceased using Mr./Ms./Mrs./Mx. as a means of polite identification. The paper claimed that by eliminating courtesy titles, all mentioned would be ‘more-equal’. 

The old song, by Simon & Garfunkel', “I am a Rock”, dealt with isolation and detachment; guess I ought to be glad I’m just a Stone.