American Thighs

by Jill Conner Browne

  We were NOT TRYING to avail ourselves of this information re: Robert and his mythic tan—we just failed, unfortunately, to go blind in time to avoid the proof displayed before us.

  The Y staff was most solicitous of the members’ likes and dislikes, wants and needs, regarding the facilities, staffing, and programs. To better hear from the membership in these matters, they installed a number of suggestion boxes in various locations around the building—one being the weight room. And so, SOMEBODY offered ’em a suggestion as follows:

  Dear Y Staff,

  We really love the Y and all the staff—the programs are great and we really love the weight room. There is a problem we would like to bring to your attention, however. It concerns a member who works out at about 5:30 a.m. every day. His name is Robert and he wears very short and revealing clothing for his workouts. The problem is this: we honestly feel that there ARE parts of Robert’s ass and other stuff that we have NOT YET SEEN and we were wondering if you would mind addressing this omission with him as we feel certain that it is an inadvertent oversight on his part and that as soon as he is made AWARE of this deficiency, he will make all good haste to show us EVERYTHING and then we can finally relax.

  Thank you for your prompt attention to this bothersome matter.

  Some Early Birds

  P.S.—We really love the maroon panties and think they should be the new uniform for the male members of the weight room and front desk staff.

  S.E.B.

  And for SOME reason, they thought I wrote it! Go figger.

  Die, Girdle, Die!

  The feminine fashion markets today are flooded with all manner of garments promising safe and effective girth control—at least for the hours of the day that we spend clothed—and they promise to do it invisibly and with no personal effort required of us, the intended victim, ahh, wearer of these magic garments.

  I scoff and I do so with authority born of miserable, sweaty experience. Call it what you will, it’s a GIRDLE and I have definitely been there and worn that.

  Okay this is one of those we-walked-six-miles-in-the-snow-barefoot-to-school-every-day stories, only it’s actually, horrifically TRUE: when I was in JUNIOR HIGH, we had to wear dresses and stockings to school EVERY DAY. Let me just tell you—unless you lived in the Time Before Pantyhose and Tampax, you don’t know shit about misery.

  I’m not going to dignify antiquated feminine hygiene products with any discussion at all and I am thinking of becoming Catholic for the sole purpose of nominating Dr. Earle Haas for sainthood—he invented tampons, bounteous blessings be upon him and all of his house forever and ever, amen. Somebody did officially name him as one of the “1000 Makers of the Twentieth Century.” I trust he was at the very top of the list—and, in my opinion, Allen Gant, the pantyhose patriarch, should be right up there with him.

  We had to wear stockings to school every single day and there was no such thing as pantyhose yet and garter belts, along with pierced ears, were for whores. We had to wear GIRDLES to keep our stockings up. This was because the huge Girdle Political Action Committee had successfully lobbied the World Fashion Powers and convinced THEM to convince US that “girdles were glamorous.” What do you reckon THAT cost ’em? I’m thinking somebody’s plastic surgery got fully funded on that little boondoggle.

  Miserably tight and wretchedly hot, certainly two of my tip-top desires for clothing, the attached garters that were smashed into your flesh by the legs of the girdle were of particular interest to me because, as it turns out, I have a mild sensitivity to latex. “Mild” in that, as a sexually active adult, I would not be able to detect the presence of a latex condom, any more than I could detect a lit match—down there. This, of course, was back before “latex sensitivity” had been invented, though, so nobody knew why I would develop such painful lesions on my thighs from simply wearing stockings like everybody else.

  It’s almost inconceivable, some of the crap women have been persuaded to put upon their own persons over the years—and the girdle was just one more example. You gotta hand it to guys—they might be led for a time down the path of mullets and Moe-Dos, and okay, I’ll grant you, the leisure suit was pretty awful—but you won’t see THEM goaded into wearing girdles. (Unless we could convince them that, no, we didn’t mean “girdles are hot” but “girdles are HOT”—in which case, they would all be racing out to get ’em and stuffing themselves into ’em, so fast as to induce head-spinning in casual observers, which, when you think about it, would be pretty entertaining, wouldn’t it?)

  I suppose the girdle was an improvement over the corset—but that seems a lot like saying it’s better to get hit by a bus than to be thrown out of an airplane. It always seemed to me that if you had to wear stockings, a garter belt was at least a cooler way to keep them up—anything would be better than a rubber suit, seemed like to me—whores were looking smarter to me all the time. They pierced their ears so their earrings didn’t pinch and they didn’t sweat to death just to keep their hose hiked up—made sense to me.

  Girdles were tight and hot and the garters made permanent indentations in your thighs—it’s hard to imagine that it was possible to get women to willingly wear them, but, like every other female in the country between the ages of thirteen and a thousand, I fell victim to the dictates of Vogue magazine that, sooner or later, trickled down even unto the sweat-soaked, fashion-impaired hinterlands of Mississippi. And so it came to pass that I found myself weighing, at the most, including the girdle and my shoes, maybe 110 pounds—but it’s 90 degrees inside our school (that was decades away from being air-conditioned, by the way) and, under my dress, I’m wearing a GIRDLE that is made of something called Lastex, which is rubber’s second cousin, once removed, to keep my nylon stockings up. I am talking HOT and a disposition that could most charitably be described as “nasty.” Is there anything on earth more ill than the temper of a woman in tight clothing on a hot day? Perhaps if a wolverine could be fitted with a girdle in July—that might come close.

  Girdle manufacturers made a pretty commanding case for their product—claiming that women who wore girdles described themselves as “feeling more organized, more alert, more authoritative and attractive.” I don’t know that I could formulate a coherent response to those women. First of all, I don’t know and can’t imagine that those women actually existed or that they actually said those things, of their own free will, with no money OR drugs involved.

  When PANTYHOSE came along, it was like a worldwide edict of “WOMAN—THOU ART LOOSED!” and I’m sure there were countless men who escaped wholesale slaughter every summer as a direct result of our dispositions being thusly improved.

  Women were actually being slowly liberated—first from the corset by the girdle, then from the girdle by the pantyhose—true life-changing progress and only over the course of about fifty-some-odd years—astounding, in an evolutionary sense. Of course, for those of us who were LIVING THROUGH all this delightful progress, it was not unlike hell, if, like me, you think that one of its famed circles is a tight waistband on a hot day. But now, all that we have suffered for and gained is in jeopardy if not altogether lost.

  Bare-Legged but Back in the Girdle?

  I have no idea WHO in the pantyhose cartel pissed off the fashionistas to bring us all into the current state of mandated year-round bare-leggedness, but, lordinheaven, I will be so glad when this feud is over. Whoever you pantyhose people are out there—cough up whatever ransom the fashion freaks are demanding so they will declare once again that women’s hosiery is de rigueur and the ugly can stop.

  Oh, please. Summertime, in a sundress with sandals, of course, just please, not too-too short if you’re over forty. But I don’t care how young you are and how gorgeous your gams are—in the wintertime, the bets are not so much off as they are frozen. Goose bumps are not attractive—no matter how tender the age of the goose. Whatever the season, for a woman to be all dressed up and have her bare feet stuck in a pair of pumps—yuck—it looks like a guy in a tux with
no socks on. And have you looked at what it does to the insides of your shoes? Even bigger yuck.

  But now let’s talk about your older, more mature stems—or tree trunks, as the case may be—and the bare-legged thing. Oh, it is bad. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but until hose make a comeback, you need to be wearing slacks. Sure, hunny, if your legs are good, you can still do sundresses and the like for casual wear. And I know you might be in great shape and therefore you might think you still look pretty snappy in your business attire and Ferragamos, but before you go out like that again, please, put on your reading glasses and gaze downward at the skin on your legs. THAT is what they look like to everybody in the entire world who’s under forty—because THEY can actually SEE.

  But now they have taken away our camouflage, sent us out with all our spider veins laid naked before the world, AND they’ve put us BACK in the GIRDLE! I don’t care what cute name you market it under—it is a GIRDLE and I am agin it!

  (Amusing aside regarding cute product names: No matter how cute and/or simple you try to make it—somebody somewhere will screw it up. I read a whole column of fashion tips in the newspaper once and the so-called consultant was recommending the Spanx brand of foundation garments—except he was an idiot and kept calling it The Spank. How hard is it to read a one-word label? But then I ran across a woman who had been advised by her “consultant” to get some Spanx, only she didn’t know about ’em and apparently didn’t understand the instructions because she called all her friends to report that she had been out all day trying to buy a SKANK and she could not wear this new dress until she got a SKANK and did we know where the hell you could buy a fucking SKANK in this town? We were pretty tickled—and, of course, now WE call ’em Skanx.)

  Back to the stream of consciousness: Not only is it positively torture to have to walk around in all day, a girdle is like the reverse equivalent of falsies—in that, sooner or later, the Truth WILL Out and it’s not likely to win any beauty contests when it do. If you’re flat, you’re flat—if you’re fat, you’re fat—and no amount of supplementing or squeezing will fool anybody to the contrary for very long. The only true remedy for either condition must be permanent—in the form of either acceptance or actual change—or you’re doomed to forever fooling with some uncomfortable contrivance.

  I will admit that a panty with power—especially one with the power extended midway down one’s thighs—can be advantageous if for no other reason than this: no matter what shape your shape is in, this foundation garment WILL smash your butt cheeks so firmly together that there is absolutely no danger of your outer garment becoming lodged between them, and that’s a plus, I don’t care who you are. For this achievement alone, the creator of them deserves the Nobel Prize for Engineering. And it should be noted that this would be THE ONLY benefit the model on the package could conceivably NEED from this product.

  The problem with these squeezy suits is a natural byproduct of the original positive intent for them. Unwitting pudgy people are duped into buying them because of our unwavering willingness to believe in the concept of The Immaculate Reduction. We view the photos of the models wearing the various miracle suits and we immediately, in our mind’s eye, see ourselves svelte, like this model right here on this package. We want more than just about anything for there to be some instant fix for our fat—something work-and deprivation-free. Something to keep our thighs from sticking together in the summer like massive, sweaty flesh magnets. I’d give strong consideration to taking it over world peace if the two were offered up—but, of course, neither one of ’em is what you’d exactly call LIKELY.

  But step back and allow yourself to SEE one of the models they use for these cruel ads. Were you to see her in real life, in person, in natural light, you would swear she had been chained to a radiator in an unlit basement and fed nothing but cellophane for the last eight years. And yet she looks lithe and lovely in the photograph—that’s because, using the forensic computer technology developed for re-creating the faces of mummified remains, they air-brushed FLESH onto her bones for the photo.

  You imagine that if she were to peel away the miraculous microfiber vestments, her true physique would unfurl and she would actually look a lot like, well, you. The Truth is this: what with the marvels of augmentation surgery available today, if we were to chance upon her in a state of full nekkidity, we would likely mistake her for a nightstand with the top drawer pulled out.

  Matter is never lost in the entire Universe—this is why it is impossible for there to be an overall net weight loss among the human race. If one of us loses a pound, another one of us finds it, and so the weight just gets passed around unto infinity. If it cannot be lost, why are we so easily persuaded that it can at least be hidden?

  If they hired a model from within the ranks of the actual living humans who regularly consumes calories—well, never mind—THAT is never going to happen. BECAUSE you know what happens when a genuine figure flaw is forced into Lycra: it just pops out somewhere else. The photo of a REAL woman in a pair of power panties might indeed render the square footage actually contained within them smooth and firm—but if you were to shift the camera at all, you would see fat stuff poking out all over the place. You wouldn’t be able to actually SEE the waistband because it would be completely covered by the fat that was pushed up and out by the powerful panties—and having no vertical support, it just lops over the waistband and rests comfortably on the top of the hips.

  My favorite are the swimsuits that offer “tummy control.” Okay, these might be beneficial if your ONLY problem area is a very slight stomachular pooch. I don’t know that I’ve ever encountered any woman who was perfect in every way, except for that one little bitty bulge below her belly button. Maybe you’re her and if so, fine—get you one of these bathing suits or pairs of slacks or skintight dresses all currently in the marketplace that claim they will cause you to immediately look five pounds thinner if you put them on.

  And can we just say that if a five-pound improvement is all you need—you really don’t need ANYTHING, you skinny bitch, get away from me, you make me look even fatter.

  But let’s just say that you are, for the sake of discussion, NORMAL, and, as such, there is spare You everywhere—not just on your tummy but on your back and your arms and your butt and your thighs—just everydamnwhere—but let’s just talk thighs here for a minute. See, the “control” stuff they use is not just across the tummy part—it’s the whole bottom half of the suit—including, of course, the LEG HOLES, and what that means to you, if you have ANY bonus flesh on the upper portion of your legs, is it’s going to look like you have, for reasons best known to yourself, chosen to come poolside with extremely tight rubber bands on the tops of your thighs and so to the horrified observer it will appear that you were going for the Pontoon Look today.

  When you squeeze your fat it can go “in” only so far—on account of we have inconveniently located vital organs and bones in there taking up valuable fat storage space. Thus, the squozen fat mostly has to go either north or south and so you don’t really so much eliminate bulges as you relocate them. The only possibility I can see for eliminating the Rubber Band Effect is to make Lycra long johns. Of course, even that is not without unwanted side effects, like swelling, and then your rings and shoes won’t fit but at least you won’t be lumpy. You might even notice your necklaces feeling snug, but if your glasses are feeling too tight, by all means go to a secure area and try to slowly open a safety valve somewhere in the suit to take the pressure off before gangrene sets in.

  Thy Merrell Sandals and Thy Big Panties, They Comfort Me

  I couldn’t say with certainty when the line was crossed—I don’t remember seeing it off in the distance, moving closer to it, and finally crossing it, leaving it fading farther and farther into the distance behind me as I move relentlessly forward on Life’s Pathway. But I can tell you that on THIS side of that line, a chance meeting with a girlfriend is not likely to bring with it those squeals of “HEEEYYY! CUTE
SHOES!” On account of we are both wearing Merrell sandals—usually black slides—they are indescribably comfy.

  Seriously, I saw my friend Adrienne the other night for the first time in about five years—and she, at least, has always been a real fashion plate. I can’t recall ever seeing her when she wasn’t “put together.” On my BEST day, those words would not describe me—I’m more often described as “clean,” but only when people for some reason feel obligated to compliment me on SOMETHING. On this occasion, however, we both had on deliciously loose, sacklike cotton clothing and the same IDENTICAL black Merrell slides and we actually did engage in a brief exchange of “Heeeyy! Cute shoes!” but you could tell it was hardly the same—black Merrells just don’t evoke squealage from spectators. You’ll hear some definite sincere moans of pleasure, however, in the shoe store when someone our age tries them on for the first time. And that’s all it takes—your Cute Shoes days are over.

  And the really great thing is—I know it’s impossible for some of y’all to believe it right now, just trust me on this as you have come to do on so many other important life issues—you will NOT be sorry. In fact, you will wonderingly ponder on the fast-fading memories of the time in your life when you sought out shoes with three-inch heels to wear to work—because they were then perfect to wear straight to the dance floor, should you work overtime on your regular Thursday night session of red town-painting.

  Hey—speaking of that—why would anybody want to paint a town—red or otherwise—and think that was a fun way to spend an evening? Just curious. Although, as I think about it, every house painter I personally have ever employed has been a religiously practicing alcoholic. I’m sure there are legions of sober ones out there—I just never have managed to find one of ’em. No, I take that back—the guy who painted our lake house porch was an absolutely sober, delightful, and punctual young man. Okay, so there’s one.