"show ankle" query

[Cohen, Gerald Leonard]

    Today I received a request from William Safire's assistant, Juliet Mohnkern, concerning a recent NY Times use of "show ankle":
 'Former White House officials said they were surprised to hear of any rift between Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby. ''One of their strengths was that they worked together,'' said Lawrence B. Wilkerson, a former State Department official who has become a critic of how the administration had handled Iraq.  "They didn't show any ankle -- it was always a team effort."'

    I explained that showing ankle derives from the days when well-bred women would not not show their ankles in public, and to do so was a decided bit of coquetishness. Cf. the dual outside staircases before some homes in the South--one coming from the right and the other from the left--so that the men and women would not go up the same one and produce the risk of a man catching a glimpse of the ankle of a woman ahead of him.

    Also, I remember reading about an American woman who was executed by firing squad, and she requested that her dress be tied around her ankles to prevent them from being seen when she fell down.  And in the short story by the great Russian early 19th century poet, Alexander Pushkin ("Mistress Into Maid"), the seventeen-year old Lisa gets all dolled up, and in a slightly daring move has her foot peeking out from beneath her long dress, and Pushkin says it is shod with all possible coquetishness.

     So in the example Ms. Mohnkern cites, the idea is that the people in the administration were in no way being cutesy and self-absorbed as a coquette showing ankle might be, but rather they acted soberly and rationally.

    Would anyone in ads-l have something to add?  If possible she'd like to find the earliest attestations of "show ankle."  Would anyone be able to help her with this? Her e-mail address is juliet.mohnkern at gmail.com

Gerald Cohen

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