Sunday, January 6, 2013

How Firm a Foundation (Ye Saints of the Lord)

You may remember the computer file with the packing list from which I've never deleted anything?  One of the items on it is girdle.  Evidently I was still struggling into those contraptions (officially known as  foundation garments) when I started that file in the 1980s. 
              Those things hanging down, kids, are garters (in Britain,  suspenders.)  They held up the stockings.  Some of you may never have seen stockings either.  They were replaced by pantyhose, which might have had something to do with the demise of the girdle, come to think of it.
               Pantyhose themselves may be on the way out these days.  Far as I can see, it's bare-legged in the summer now, and tights in the winter.  The world marches on, leaving girdles and stockings back in the Dark Ages.  But if you search on eBay under its classy word for "old" and "used", you'll find that people are actually bidding on and buying "vintage girdles".   Maybe it's collectors -- remember the beginning of "Cold Comfort Farm"?
               Today I see ads for an exciting new invention that sure looks like what we knew as the panty girdle, except that it is disguised with a super-cute name, something along the order of Spanky? Spunky? or maybe just Silly. I predict failure for this undertaking. We’ve come a long way, baby, and I don't see us going back.

3 comments:

  1. spanx. and yes, what they aren't is, girdles! but your prediction is wrong. most of my contemporaries own at least one version, including, uh, me. so there ya go.

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  2. I also admit to owning s spanx like object that is uncomfortable but smooths unsightly bulges to some extent. Sometimes I think about wearing it.

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  3. I also admit to owning s spanx like object that is uncomfortable but smooths unsightly bulges to some extent. Sometimes I think about wearing it.

    ReplyDelete