That's so different from my experience. I as a much older woman never had the pressure you had in your youth to wear hose two shades darker than your actual skin tone. So sorry you went through that. When I was young, the norm was that "clear" or "see through" hose should match one's natural skin color. But all of us back then were allowed to, and did, wear a variety of dark hose and tights - navy blue, ochre, dark brown, light grey, slate, ink, black...

From my 20s-early 50s, on occasions when pantyhose was called for, I was quite fond of oyster tones, and that's what I usually wore. Though from circa 1968 on, in warm weather I and every girl/woman I knew who chose to do so would freely go bare legged - and suffered no criticism for it.

During my 20s and 30s (in the 70s-90s) in warm weather I didn't just eschew leg coverings, I often went without underpants too - even under skirts of various lengths. In fact, wearing skirts without undies was recommended by my (female) ob-gyn as a way of staving off and getting over the fungal or yeast genital infections I frequently had back then. And it worked! In addition, going bare crotched and bare legged sure could be fun!

In particular, I recall some very sexy experiences from the summer of 1985 when I, sporting a crew cut atop my head and kitten heels on my feet, went on some delicious dates wearing an orange linen miniskirt, bare legs and no undies. The fella I was dating was a hubba hubba hunk who unfortunately had a very boring Anglo name; since I back then was accustomed to dating men of myriad ethnicities, and liked to think of myself as a woman who walked on the wild side, I refused to use his real name and instead called him "Armando" and "Javid." He didn't complain!