On what is wrong with short skirts

I was 12.  Miniskirts were in fashion. I had a pretty, wool miniskirt in a cranberry tweedy fabric.  I was wearing fishnets on my legs.  

This was Wisconsin in winter.  The temperature was about 10ºF, maybe colder.  My school was half a mile from my house.  

When I got to school, my legs were frostbitten.  When I got inside, they turned bright red and burned.

The same thing happened the next day.

The girls in my school decided to do a sort of strike the third day.  Everyone was to wear pants to school.  They, too, obviously had suffered.

My mother, to her credit, brought me a midi-length shearling coat and new fuzzy tights.  I think I didn't actually wear pants to school that day when everyone else did, but I didn't have cold legs.  I don't know whatever happened to whatever I had worn the prior year.  I seem to recall that I had had knit leggings.  Perhaps I had outgrown them.

We got the right to wear warm pants to school.  After that, my mom got me some lined acrylic pants that were very warm and dressy-looking plaid.  I did sometimes wear them.

I was 12.  I drew a conclusion from this experience.  This conclusion was "People who want to see my legs are not my friends."

Today it is summer.  The high today was in the mid 80s.  I am wearing a dress that I bought at a rest stop off an interstate on a recent trip, when I was running low on dresses.  It's above the knee.  My legs are not cold.

I was on Zoom with this dress.  No one could see how long it is.  It might have been to my ankles as far as anyone else in the meeting was concerned.  I was the only one who knew it was above the knee.

I'm thinking of the 12-year old me.  Alone in my kitchen today, I found myself saying out loud "people who want to see my legs are not my friends," tho no one, in fact, was looking at them or in sight.