John Rogers was asleep in the backseat when a Columbus police officer pulled over his brother late on a Saturday night in April 1973. The officer tapped Rogers on the shoulder to wake him up.
In the mercury vapor light of an alleyway north of Bryden Road, the officer took in what Rogers was wearing: dark palazzo pants, a blouse with a print of tiny flowers, a pink three-quarter-length pullover sweater and a black wig styled in a funky shag. The officer knew what a funky shag was because his wife wore the same style. She also wore palazzo pants.
“Those are women’s clothes you have on,” he told Rogers.
“No, they’re not,” Rogers replied. “They’re my clothes.”
In 1973, it was against the law in Columbus for a man to wear palazzo pants, just as in previous generations it had been illegal for men to wear poodle skirts, flapper dresses, high lace collars, corsets, bustles and petticoats. It was illegal for women to wear men’s clothing, as well.
John H. Rogers was arrested that night and convicted later that year in Franklin County Municipal Court under what was known short-handedly as the city’s “improper-dress law.” In full, it read: “No person shall appear upon any public street or other public place in a state of nudity or in a dress not belonging to his or her sex, or in an indecent or lewd dress.”
At trial, the arresting officer testified that Rogers appeared to have a bra on under his blouse and sweater and also spoke in a soft, feminine voice. “I felt that … any time this gentleman dressed the way he was, any time he wanted to [he] could walk into a women’s restroom,” the officer said of Rogers. “He would go completely unchallenged. He could go anyplace out of the view of men.”
Judge Frank Reda found the 22-year-old guilty and fined him $25—the equivalent of more than $170 today.
Rogers, though, was the last in a long line of people convicted under the improper-dress law, which had been on the books in Columbus…
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