There’s something so timeless about the way children meet the world, wide-eyed, curious, and unafraid.

These photos from 1969 capture “Bright-Eyed Amy” at the Griffith Park Zoo in Los Angeles, chatting with a goose and later riding a pony with the confidence of a tiny cowgirl.

Her bright yellow dress, green tights, and white shoes are pure late-1960s joy. I love the bold colors against the California dust and sunshine. Behind her, the world hums on with promise: pony rides, parked cars, and that faded pastel skyline that so many Angeleno childhoods were built on including my own. We left Southern California just a few months before I turned 7. I believe it was Aristotle who said, “Give me a child until he is seven, and I will show you the man.” Yikes.

The First Seven Years of Childhood

Developmental experts often say the first seven years shape everything that follows including the map of trust and the size of wonder. Also, literally how we love. Neurologically, roughly 90 percent of the brain’s growth occurs during this period, establishing the pathways for language, empathy, and emotional regulation. Psychologists like Erik Erikson identified these years as the foundation for trust and autonomy, while educators such as Maria Montessori and Rudolf Steiner viewed them as a sacred window for imagination and moral intuition. In many cultures, the age seven has long marked the age of reason, the point when a child begins to see themselves as separate from the family and the wider world. For Generation Xers born between 1961 and 1981, these formative years unfolded in a world of freedom. If our childhoods were anything they were expansive. And, yes, I suppose quite feral, although the memes joking about that have gotten super old.

As with all the pictures I’ve posted of Generation X, these candid shots of Amy harken back to simpler Los Angeles and life as it was more than half a century ago.

If there was a single fashion staple of late-1960s girlhood, it was the colored tight. They came in several different colors but as best I can recall, hunter green, olive green, cherry red and mustard yellow were the most popular colors. They were often paired with short shift dresses or pinafores stitched primarily from polyester or corduroy. For many girls, tights offered the freedom to run, swing and climb on the monkey bars without tugging at hems or showing your days-of-the-week underwear. Haha. It was still quite common during the Gen X childhood for girls to wear dresses to school every day. Wild, but true.

Amy’s green tights were definitely part of our generation’s palette. I never had a pair in that shade, but I did have dark green ones, which I wore with my beloved Winnie the Pooh dress. Some girls paired that dress with red or mustard-colored tights. There was a Winnie the Pooh top that was paired with red pants.

I also wore a lot of white tights with lace patterns. Check out this lovely little photo of yours truly. When my mom tried, I looked downright adorable in a handmade dress with a red sash. Truly, it belied the abject poverty of our lives. Thank you, Mom!

I also want to mention that it was a real drag when they ended up in the dryer bespeckled with tiny boogers of lint. Also, the dreaded shrinkage, which made it impossible to pull the tights up to your crotch. Haha. Drove every girl I know nearly mad. 

I love a good colored tights photo and have gathered a little collection of pictures of Gen X girls in red tights. Also, we called them leotards in California, but later, that became a reference to well, leotards, as in gymnastics or ballet. The colored tights trend lingered well into the 1970s and then hit a break before making a brief comeback in the 1980s. 

Amy: A Name for a Generation

The name Amy bloomed in the late 1960s and 1970s, carried by thousands of girls who would grow up to define Generation X. Simple, gentle, and universally liked, it reflected a cultural shift toward friendliness and approachability and away from the heavier, more formal names of earlier eras. For example, multi-syllabic names like Dorothy, Barbara, Carolyn, Patricia, Shirley. Basically, the names of our mothers.

Finally, these photos are from the Nelson Archive, which Nelson shared with me prior to his death. A prolific photographer, he captured thousands of pictures of his family throughout the last half of the 20th Century and into the first quarter of the 21st Century. I treasure his work and his generosity. RIP, Nelson. What a lovely human being and amazing father you were.

Do you remember your favorite pair of colored tights, the ones you wore until the knees went thin or your toes poked through the seams?