Many members of the so-called "Baby Boom" generation reached the age of sexual awareness at a unique moment in the history of fashion. For a short period of three or four years, fashon trends, shifting social attitudes, and changing technology intersected in awkward, out-of-synch, and sometimes unsettling ways.
Not to put to fine a point on it, miniskirts got short before womens' underwear did.
Cultural inertia and technical challenges slowed the transition from gartered stockings to pantyhose that eventually resolved the problem. As a result, during the years 1966 through 1969 (a little earlier or later, perhaps, depending on geography) young men got frequent glimpses of the intimate apparel of the young ladies in their lives.
This phenomenon is more than just a footnote in a fashion history textbook for a fundamental psychological reason, rooted deep in the most primitive levels of the human brain. Like chimpanzees and orangutans, the higher primate called Homo sapiens relies strongly on visual stimuli for sexual cues.
It is not surprising, then, that many men whose sexual personae were formed during this era still carry its imprint. More surprising, at least to this writer, is the variety of ways in which the affected young ladies reacted to the situation.
The 1980's book What We Wore, by Ellen Melinkoff, quoted several women whose recollections reflected the prevailing orthodoxy of the era in which they spoke:
I was working as a switchboard operator during the miniskirt years. I sat on a high stool and tucked my dress under me. Then I had to remember to keep my knees together when I swung around and faced the room. Every time I reached up to plug or unplug a call, I would have to redo my neat little tucked mini. It was reach-and-tuck, reach-and-tuck all night, week in and week out. I had to be stylish even if it was a pain. I couldn't let a stocking top, a garter, a girdle cuff, or (finally) the panty part of the pantyhose show for even a second. It was draining.
Or,
Garter belts were out and panty girdles were in. If you did not need a long-leg panty girdle, you wore one anyway and that was that. Miniskirts began to appear. Some ignorant girls continued to wear panty girdles and old-fashioned stockings with the new shorter skirts. We all know what happened when they sat down or crossed their knees.
At last, pantyhose became affordable. But some girls bought the kind that were reinforced or knit in darker nylon at the thigh so the tops of their stockings still showed when [they were] sitting in a miniskirt. Disgusting. Add to this the wearing of reinforced-toe stockings with sandals or open-toe shoes. Beneath contempt. Thank God reinforced-heel stockings were a thing of the past.
And,
If men thought that minis meant they'd be treated to a veritable parade of bare legs, they were to be at least partially disappointed. When miniskirts first appeared, women were still wearing brown-topped stockings. Garter gap was a nightmare.
If we'd asked men for their advice, they would have suggested we go bare-legged. Not on your life! That would have left us too vulnerable. We either bit the bullet with stockings until pantyhose were perfected, or we wore tights. The technology of tights was perfected before the technology of sheer pantyhose. White, black, purple, and especially in fishnet and lace, they left only an outline as a daring gesture.
Tights were proper, modest, and efficient, but men seemed to think they were a a cheap trick. Sure, they saw more little white triangles of cotton in a day than they had in a lifetime of shirtwaists, but as often as not the crotch was carefully encased in lace or purple and in all sorts of new slips and bloomer devices. The fantasy was no longer to rip away the strapless gown but to reach up the micro-mini to find a mere bikini brief. But most men found one, two, three layers of impediment.
The prevalence of such sentiments in latter-day accounts might lead the historian to conclude that women unanimously found the popularity of the miniskirt annoying and burdensome, the curiosity of young men intrusive and offensive. Yet the following exchanges will demonstrate that reality, as always, is far more complex.
-Virginian
As I remember, girdles went out of fashion for one fundamental reason: it was difficult to keep them hidden under miniskirts. Around 1968, when I entered college and almost all of my girlfriends still wore girdles, it was the era of the long-leg panty girdle. These just didn't go with miniskirts, although we all wore them anyway, and no doubt the guys all had a voyeuristic ball (my husband confirms this, and he thinks it has a lot to do with his own fascination with women in girdles).
You remember. You considered yourself lucky if only your stocking tops were showing. Ironically, we didn't forsake the long-leg panty girdles because if they showed, it was at least more modest than showing the actual garter and bare skin. I certainly felt this way. Of course, I didn't have the fashion guts at that time to wear my skirts at a dignified length.
I do recall a high school boyfriend telling me that he fell passionately in love with me one day while watching me deeply absorbed in taking a test, so absorbed in what I was doing that I was oblivious to the fact that my dress had ridden up to expose about three inches of my panty girdle leg. I was both amused and grossed out by his confession. It didn't make any clear sense to me. Why would this have had such an impact? I'm still trying to understand the profound effect these "girdle glimpses" seem to have had upon a generation of males, including my husband and many of the men who have posted to this board.
From conversations with my husband and former boyfriends, and from my own memories, I know that boys during the period 1966-69 would:
- drop pencils,
- look up as they ascended staircases,
- enjoy giving presentations in the front of a classroom,
- sit down on a curb waiting for a school bus,
- position themselves across from girls at long cafeteria or lab tables, then tie their shoes, etc.
.... all in order to get that glimpse of white girdled thigh and dark brown stocking top. We girls were aware of what was going on, but we were powerless to stop it. I do not remember enjoying having to be constantly aware of where my hem was in relation to my panty girdle leg. I longed for the days when skirts were longer. Still, in retrospect it is amusing to recall. It did definitely fill the air with a kind of sexual energy that seems to have dissipated when pantyhose and slacks became acceptable attire around 1970. And of course, some of us are still energized by our memories of what went on in that period.
The only stab I can take at explaining why the "girdle glimpse" had such power is that the period from 1966-69 was the period before sexuality became prosaic. Things were still repressed, in terms of what forms of sexual behavior were acceptable, but things were opening up. Symbolically, the era of the girdle was passing and that of the miniskirt was beginning. While they co-existed, it was possible to see up a girl's skirt, but there still was a strong sense that what was under there was not available. Although you were able to see, you still weren't supposed to, and it therefore meant something if you could.
And while an actual view of what was hidden would have been too literal, and would have destroyed the magic, viewing the girdle gave a young man a full sense of a young woman's mystery and otherness, without actually being an unacceptable visual violation of her. It was a sexually charged moment, but it was an unavoidable part of everyday life, happening unexpectedly, fleetingly, suddenly, frequently.
Does this make sense to people?
From Virginian:
A "voyeuristic ball?" Well, maybe; but it wasn't nearly that simple.
First, to address the bill of particulars:
- Drop pencils? No, too obvious.
- Look up as they ascended staircases? Guilty as charged.
- Enjoy giving presentations in the front of a classroom? Much too nervous to enjoy the view :)
- Sit down on a curb waiting for a school bus? Not that I can recall... might have, had I thought of it.
- Position themselves across from girls at long cafeteria or lab tables... Definitely.
- ...then tie their shoes, etc. Again, too obvious.
You have to understand, there was this continuing conflict going on between the forces of I Wanna! and You Shouldn't! (Like in the cartoons... you know, where there's an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, each whispering instructions in your ear?) I was raised to be a gentleman, and though everything within me wanted to be a rake, I would have died had I thought a girl I admired caught me looking up her dress. Certainly, I assumed, she would hold me in contempt, as little better than window peeper or a clothesline underwear thief.
But, oh, how it inflamed me when those glimpses came unbidden! Yet when they did, the pleasure was mixed with that powerful sense of guilt, shame, and confusion that permeated a Catholic boy's sexual awakening... and I think that is what made it all so powerful: the unresolvable conflict
My most devastating experience came in my freshman year of college, one morning just before class. I was sitting in my seat, gazing idly across the room at Mary Catherine O'Reilly, on whom I had a vague crush. Sweet, Irish Catholic girl... buxom, long brown hair, green eyes to die for.
I'll never forget-- she's wearing a plaid miniskirt and a tight, white sweater. She's standing, facing me, then someone says something and she turns away to answer. As she moves, her flippy little skirt hooks on the back of a chair and lifts all the way up to her waist. Suddenly, there for the world to see, is the beautiful rear end of a girl I admire, encased in a white, long-leg, panty girdle. She hadn't a clue how much she was showing, and that's how she stood until class began-- an eternity.
I was good for nothing the rest of the day, and I suspect that this chance moment finished the process of warping me for life.
From Suzanne:
I'm sorry if I seemed (with a wink, of course) to downplay the seriousness of Virginian's moral reservations about "seeing" a young lady's girdle. Part of the reason I didn't take it that seriously is that I remember that we girls did not hold guys responsible for looking at what we could not hide. A guy who seemed to go too visibly out of his way to look up our skirts was considered a jerk, but a guy who seemed transfixed by an accidental display of panty girdle was looked on as simply, well, a male.
Also, since the period we're talking about was more than two and a half decades ago, I consider the statutes of limitation to have run out. It is purely amusing to me in retrospect and since girdles have become a wonderful part of the romance of my marriage, and since my husband was hooked in exactly the same way as you and other men who have posted to the group, I guess I've largely forgotten or ignored the embarrassment display of my girdle used to cause me, or the shame it might have caused in boys who treated themselves to a glimpse.
I'll conclude by observing that at least we females had some revenge. If you'll recall, the pants boys wore during the same period were impossibly tight and often very revealing. I remember some wonderful moments in ladies' rooms at dances when we girdled and mini-skirted young ladies would explode with mirth at how "obvious" some boy had been, in his visible excitement while dancing with us.
From Susan B.:
I started high school in 1969 and around here, pantyhose had just about supplanted stockings for girls my age. But almost every one of us still wore panty girdles over our pantyhose. I suppose there were a number of reasons for this:
- It was part of "being properly dressed."
- Our mothers and older sisters still wore them.
- Parental pressure stemming from the "chastity protection" aspect of a heavy-duty panty girdle.
- Needing something to hold ill fitting pantyhose up where they belonged.
- Not feeling quite covered and secure in a short dress without one.
- "All the other girls wear one."
- "My butt really is too big and I need one to keep from jiggling."
- In perhaps limited cases, as a relatively safe flirting device, and so on.
And while the reason(s) why no doubt varied for one girl to the next, we all still wore them. In my case, it began as numbers 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6, then to being numbers 3 and 4 until I went off to college, and then it was just number 4 until pantyhose improved enough that they stayed up pretty well by themselves and I wore girdles only occasionally. My older sister (about 4 years older) started out the same as I did, but soon added number 8. Not long after she started dating, she used her panty girdle leg cuffs and the ever present bra shoulder strap sliding off her shoulder and out the arm hole of her sleeveless dress as just so much additional alpha-male bait.
I, and most of my friends, began to wear stockings and panty girdles in junior high and made the change to pantyhose just about the time we started highschool - so wearing panty girdles was nothing new. In fact, as Suzanne and others have written, being allowed to wear a panty girdle and stockings was one of the sterling rites of passage in becoming a young woman in the '50s and '60s. I remember my first one and how very grown up and sophisticated I felt wearing it, clearly to this day.
So anyway, there I was, on the first day of the 9th grade in my pantyhose and panty girdle, and relatively short skirt - just like all of my friends. The first big shock came when I entered several classrooms and found that the desks were arranged as three, four, or five rows on both of the long sides of the room, facing the aisle down the center instead of all facing the same direction (like facing the teacher's desk and the chalk board on one of the short sides of the room as always had been the case before). Ulp!
The first classroom like this I encountered was near my previous class and I was one of the first in the room. After realizing what this seating layout meant and how it might affect my ability to maintain a lady-like decorum while sitting in one of those desks for an hour, I made for the nearest desk on a back row, sat down, crossed my legs, tugged my skirt down as far as it would go, and tried to make a quick, surreptitious visual check to ensure that nothing was showing. As the other students filtered in, I watched closely and could clearly see the light bulbs flash on and burn with unbelievable intensity over the heads of many of the boys as they realized what this might mean. I also saw the look of surprise, which was then quickly followed by one of dismay, annoyance, or disgust on the faces of most of the girls.
Some did not figure it out until they had actually picked out a seat and sat down, and then noticed all the male eyes intently watching them as they adjusted themselves in their seats. Those on the front rows were particularly vulnerable. No only were boys facing them, but no longer could a girl get herself situated while being shielded by the desk in front of her. I made aalways hurry to this class so I would not have to sit in front. A girlfriend, Michelle, rushed in and plopped down beside me, her eyes getting big as she saw the distress of the girls in the front row facing us and realized what they were feeling.
A long-time male friend, Frank, sat down in the desk in front of me and immediately turned around sideways in his desk so he could talk to Michelle and me (and probably to glance at our legs from time to time - the same ol' same ol', which we were quite used to and was no big deal). We were discussing our good fortune to be in the same class together once again and speculating on what the new school year in the new and big and scary school would bring when we noticed one of the (very beautiful and very popular) cheerleaders from our junior high arriving just as the bell rang. She scooted in just ahead of the teacher and headed for one of the last remaining desks (which, of course, was on the front row) directly across from us.
In her haste to be seated and keep control of her purse and books, and, of course, to prettily flip her hair out of her face all at the same time, she did not execute the sit-down very gracefully and gave everyone on my side of the room that was looking in her direction a rather splendid and prolonged view of her panty-girdled thighs. And to those of us more directly across from her, a long and clear view up her dress, all the way up to and including the crotch of her panty girdle. The stark whiteness of her girdle seemed to glow in the sky light from the windows behind me, and each and every seam was clearly visible (the typical panty girdle of the time was heavily constructed from a large number of separate pieces of fabric). At that instant I realized how glad I was that it was she and not me. And at the same time, for some reason, I did not feel badly for her at all (heh, heh, heh).
Michelle (who was rather like the Phoebe character on the sitcom "Friends") let out a gasp and clapped her hands over her eyes. Frank's voice trailed off and the Bic pen he was always chewing on dropped out of his mouth and clattered to the floor (there was not actually any excessive drool - I checked). I quickly looked around and saw that every boy on my side of the room (and most of the girls, too) were staring at (the girl who most of us knew to be) the ex-cheerleader as she struggled with her things.
After what seemed forever, she got herself collected and got her dress pulled down and crossed her legs, looking a little sheepish. I poked Frank in the ribs and he gave a little squeek and started breathing again. I told Michelle that she could come out now. I was absolutely amazed at what had happened... how the sight of a panty girdle, which was certainly much more covering that what girls wore to the beach, had so affected all the boys on my side of the room. They were all still looking in her direction. Many of the girls were, too. I was amazed and baffled. Maybe it had something to do with her being a semi-celebrity. What was the big deal???
Presently, the teacher started the class, checked roll, and began pacing up and down that center aisle, outlining what she planned to cover in the coming semester. That done, she passed out books, took down serial numbers, and gave us the rest of the period to look through them and install book covers. Frank rarely took his eyes off of the ex-cheerleader. Neither did most of the other boys. Then I saw why. Every time she shifted around in her seat or crossed the other leg, there would be some panty girdle leg showing for a moment or two. For those of us sitting directly across from her, there would often be a glimpse of panty girdle crotch. Even after carefully adjusting her dress, after a while it would work its way up until the girdle leg was visible a little bit under the leg that was crossed over the top of the other one.
In the more traditionally arranged classrooms, the only person in a position to see any of this would be the teacher, and then only in the first few rows. The rest of us did not have to worry about anything except the occasional backwards glance from a boy a seat or two in front, and even then, the angles were not always conducive to seeing anything at all and the risk of the teacher's wrath was usually a deterrent. But in this seating layout, there was nowhere to hide. Half the class was looking straight at you all of the time and there were only a few rows of seats to try to hide behind.
I watched the other girls on the other side, and noticed that most of them had a lot of trouble keeping everything covered, as well. I wondered if I was having the same problem and came to the sudden realization that I probably was as I locked eyes with a boy across the way who had been watching my legs as I crossed the other leg. He quickly looked away and seemed a little embarrassed. I then stared down the boy sitting next to him. I then realized that I was probably going to have to either get used to having boys see my underwear in this class or figure out some other plan. As it turned out, I had two more classes in the afternoon in rooms laid out as this one was and was never free of them the entire four years of high school.
Finally, the bell rang and the three of us, having been assigned the first of three possible lunch periods, made our way to one of the two cafeterias (it was a very large school - I later graduated in a class of more than 1200). We ran into only one other person from our junior high and invited her to sit with us to eat. The first thing she said when she sat down was that she had had an English class in a room "where the desks all faced each other."
"Bummer," says Michelle (it was 1969 after all), "we had one, too. And [ex-cheerleader] embarrassed herself and everyone else in the class when she sat down."
"That happened in my class, too - but it wasn't me," said the other.
"I wasn't embarrassed at all," said Frank, still lost in a dream state and only picking at his food. I kicked him under the table for being crass.
After a while, Michelle and the other girl spotted some girls that they knew and went over to talk to them, leaving Frank and me by ourselves. I really wanted to ask him about what had happened and why, and to insist he tell me what the big deal was, but I could not think of a good way to bring it up. So I just sat and looked at all the new people. After a while, he looks at me, his eyes finally coming into focus, and says in a wistful voice, "I guess I can die, now..."
"What?" says I, caught by surprise.
"I've seen today what I never thought I would ever have a chance to see in this life, and saw it longer and clearer and better than I ever imagined was possible in this life or any other. If it weren't for algebra, this could be heaven."
Well, this was the opening I had been waiting for and we discussed it thoroughly. Afterwards, I still did not fully understand what was the big deal in seeing a girl's panty girdle (while she was wearing it) since he had seen her (and me, for that matter) in a swimsuit at the graduation picnic just three months earlier. True, part of the thrill was who was involved (ex-cheerleader, who he had secretly lusted after all through junior high, all the while knowing, for certain, that he would never have any chance at all with her), but the major part was, as Suzanne points out, seeing something, up, under a dress, that he was not supposed to see.
And, it really meant something to him. And I still, to this day, don't entirely get it, but I know it to be true.
We were quiet for a time, and suddenly I had a thought: "If it had been me over there, would you have looked?"
"Absolutely."
I am dumbfounded. I am simultaneously wanting to slap him up the side of the head and feeling a little bit hurt that such a good, long-time friend would think of me that way or take advantage of me that way.
And then, strangely, I felt a little bit flattered that he would. I was really confused. He must have seen the turmoil in my face because then he said, "Hey, don't take it personally... it's not a personal thing. It wouldn't have been because it was you, Susan, over there, but just a girl in a moment of carelessness. I'm a guy... I have to look. It's a rule. I mean, you girls try so hard to hide things that it makes the victory of finally seeing something, anything at all, if only for a second, that much sweeter."
Great. Somehow it didn't clear up my confusion at all, but I did feel better about it. And over the next four years, he had plenty of opportunity to look at all the girls he dreamt of. I even caught him looking up my dress more than a few times, but he just winked and then smiled, and I found that I really did not mind so much.
So anyway, I partially solved the problem by wearing shorter and shorter panty girdles, but since I also wore shorter and shorter skirts, this was a lot less effective than it might have been. Wearing girdles in colors other than white was also a big help - it was much harder to tell what you were looking at if it was not easy to distinguish the color from the skirt and/or pantyhose. Another girlfriend and I conducted experiments for a while sitting across from each other in class to determine which girdle lengths and colors worked best with a particular dress or skirt color and length and color pantyhose or tights. This information made things a lot easier, especially for her, because she was pretty short. Since I was (am) fairly tall and short waisted and very long legged, it was much less of a problem for me than for my shorter friends. I finally ended up wearing panty girdle briefs, usually in dark or matching colors most of the time (as did many of my friends).
The other thing is that we just got used to having boys looking at our legs and sometimes up our dresses as we sat down or crossed our legs. We got used to them seeing our underwear at those times and at other times when we were not extra careful, and pretty soon it did not seem like too much of a big deal. There were some girls, however, who continued to take it personally and would get mad at the time and then continue to fuss and fume about it later in the restroom or after school, "Did you see Allen? He was just staring right up my dress. The nerve... who does he think he is?? He is so gross!" And there were times in which I thought some of them did, in fact, protest too much.
As for those who were sincerely pissed off about it, at first I was sympathetic, then I was amused, and after a while, I was annoyed by this kind of bitching. Either wear pants or longer skirts, or put up with the consequences - you can't have it both ways. If you give them something to look at, boys were going to look. Period. That is the way it is.
Me? I liked to wear short skirts (and probably the attention it brought me) more than I disliked the consequences when I was careless. Sometimes, it was just not worth the extra effort to repeatedly drag everything down and take extra pains, and then they got a little better show than they otherwise might have. So what. Big deal.
From Lillian:
I am a woman of mature years, that is, older than your Suzanne. A long time ago, as a 16-year-old high school girl, I was fortunate to attract the attention of one of my sister's college friends, a young man of 19 with a convertible. After several casual dates I asked my mother for her advice on how to snare him for the summer. She wisely told me to get him to invite me to dinner and a first run movie in a downtown theater. She told me to dress up for this important occasion. Through my sister the invitation to dinner and a movie two days hence came the next day.
I prepared carefully. I wore a form-fitting light blue dress and borrowed, from another sister, heels that rather matched the dress. Underneath I wore a new long-leg white panty girdle and matching bra with a short lacy half-slip. The panty girdle was very sleek and had a delicate lace covering the garters. With nylon hose and a navy blue purse borrowed from my mother I looked quite smart.
Tommy, my date, wore a suit and a tie. One dressed more grandly in former times for dinner and a first run movie in a downtown theater, a seafood restaurant and all went well. We drove to the downtown area and parked the car on the street, having about a half hour before the beginning of the movie. I let him take my hand and we strolled down Broadway looking at the shop windows.
In the set-back entry to a department store I felt the front garter of my girdle loosen. Modestly I turned away from Tommy and hiked my skirt and slip to regarter my hose. I had to pull back the lace and fumbled with the garter and my hose top for what seemed an eternity, before dropping my skirt and slip and turning to Tommy. Looking down at the store window I realized that he had seen everything reflected in the glass. His face was red and when he took my hand to continue our walk he was trembling.
At that moment I realized that I had his attention in a very definite way. I didn't need my mother to tell me this. I pulled him into the next store doorway and told him that I was wearing a new girdle and that I hadn't gotten my hose gartered securely when I dressed. His attention increased. I pulled up my skirt and slip again and let him see me find the garter under the pretty lace, undo it, and then reattach it to my stocking top. When I dropped my skirt and slip he actually sighed. I thanked him for waiting and he was clever enough to tell me that what he saw of my panty girdle was very pretty. (He had been most complimentary at dinner about my dress and general appearance).
We sat in the back row of the movie, as young couples were wont to do in those days, and he put his arm around me. He kissed me several times. Most boys next went for my breasts, which even then were full, but he put his hand on my knee and slowly slid it up over my hose to my panty girdle. I let him explore the stocking top, the lace, and the garter. When he tried to explore higher up I took his hand and put it back on my knee.
I don't remember the movie we saw that night but Tommy had a good time and I preserved my virtue. He was my beau for the rest of the summer. I took pains to let him see me gartering my hose often. Some of my girdles were brief panty girdles and several were straight (open-crotch) girdles. Clearly Tommy was fascinated with garters and girdles. I did give him more leeway during our petting and discovered that he was also interested in the upper half of my body. However, the summer finished with Tommy back at college and me with my virginity intact.
I never saw Tommy again and wonder if he still has his fascination with garters and girdles. Needless to say I found other "Tommys" and wearing attractive girdles worked to keep their attention.
From Virginian:
I would confidently wager that somehere out there in this big wide world, "Tommy" is still having pleasant dreams of the moment when Lillian fastened her garter in the department store doorway.
Count on it.
From Susan B.:
Those times, as Suzanne and others have said, were much more highly charged with staticsexual energy than the times we live in now (I think that this is actually true and is not just a perceptual consequence of us not being teenagers, or chaste any more). I was absolutely amazed that the mere _prospect_ of a glimpse of a girdle up the dress of a girl could so effectively channel and focus the powerful and slightly scary energies of a boy. After all, what could he possibly be getting out of it? Certainly not sex... or even a look at sex - just an expanse of nylon and Lycra, that in and of itself, was completely non-sexual (well, at least to most boys), and could easily be seen elsewhere. The key seem to be that a girl was wearing it, under a dress, and that made its viewing taboo - a symbol of sex.
I remember many times in a quiet classroom, when taking an exam, for example, the merest whisper of nylon sliding across nylon was enough to make every boy in the room look up from his paper to see what might be seen. It is amazing how perfectly they could localize the source of the sound and then unfailingly look up, directly at the poor girl who was crossing her legs. I used to watch this with amazement and wonder what aspect of natural selection was responsible for this particular adaptation.
Now, with this kind of power at a girl's disposal, it was very difficult to refrain from misusing it. I, of course, would never have thought of taking advantage of poor, helpless little boys, who could not help themselves. Nope, not me. I did, however, once have to move things along a little, so to speak...
There was a guy in a couple of my classes during my junior year who I'd had my eye on for quite some time. We had talked about class and this and that at lunch and other times and had run into each other several times during the summer vacation just ended, but somehow, he always seemed to be more interested in another girl who was very pretty and very popular. But for some reason(!), he never got around to approaching her. The more I got to know him, the more I found I liked him and the more I wanted him to like me and to ask me out. I really liked this guy a lot and was getting very frustrated that he seemed to only think of me as a friend. I really wanted to be more than just a friend.
One day, I noticed him looking down at my legs during a chemistry lab lecture (we were lab partners and had to sit on high, uncomfortable stools). The stool was hard to sit on but I had finally managed to hook the heel of one shoe on a rung and cross my other leg over that one. I glanced down and saw that my skirt had ridden up far enough to reveal several inches of girdle leg on the side of the leg that was crossed over. That particular girdle was a short to mid-leg item and that meant that the skirt was really 'way up there and that most of my leg was visible from the side - his side. He was transfixed. There was no one else around (we were the only ones on the last row of lab tables), so realizing that this was my big chance, I shifted a bit, causing the skirt to ride up a little higher, revealing about an inch of girdle leg cuff on the top of my leg. He shifted on his stool, as well, but continued to stare down at my legs.
This went on for quite a while. I was trying to listen and take notes while I also tried to make sure Mike was still looking where I wanted him to look. I kept waiting for something to happen - I didn't know exactly what, but I wanted something to happen. But for the longest time, nothing did. It was getting close to the end of class and I realized that I had better do something or risk losing my chance. So I uncrossed my leg, did not pull the skirt down, and hooked the heel of that shoe on the rung next to the other one. I even swivelled a little more toward him, causing the skirt to ride up even further, just barely covering the crotch of the girdle from my vantage point. I was pretty sure that from his angle, he had a clear view of everything that was up there.
I continued to listen and take notes, while glancing at him from time to time. One time he noticed that I had caught him staring and was quite startled and began to blush. I gave him my biggest, best, and warmest smile. After a moment of confusion, he smiled back and then looked down at my legs and panty girdle crotch for a few seconds and then back up at me. I smiled and nodded and then he smiled back. (Gotcha!)
At that moment, the teacher called on him to answer a question after noticing that he was not paying attention (she could not see what was occupying his attention). Caught by surprise and all unawares, he began to grope for the answer. As luck would have it, the answer was one of the last notes I had written down, so I surreptitiously pointed at it with my pen. He read the note and gave the answer, taking most of the wind out of her sails. (Just gotta reel him in, now.)
He continued to look at my legs and panty girdle crotch until the bell rang, risking additional calls from the teacher for not paying attention. As we were leaving, he asked if he could drop by my house after school and copy my notes. I told him that it probably would be a good idea since the material was sure to be on the test next we ended up dating through the rest of highschool and pantyhose and panty girdles were often one of the focuses of our make-out sessions. They were certainly a turn-on for him, and they were for me, too (although I already knew this).
Whew! There was a time when I would have strenuously denied that that ever happened and would have died before I would have set it down on paper (or electrons). But now, now that I am older and maybe a little wiser, and have come to appreciate once again the sexual powers women have over men and that men have over women, and know that the differences between the sexes and the sexual powers we have over one another are part of what makes life interesting, pleasurable, and worthwhile. I certainly never regretted the incident in the chemistry lab and I am sure that Mike did not either.
Over the years I have questioned various boyfriends about the business of living for a glimpse of girdle or pantyhose crotch and got precious little more information. Then I met my husband- to-be. He is my age and grew up in a nearby city. Classrooms with desks facing a center aisle, and girls wearing miniskirts and panty girdles over their pantyhose were all the rage in his highschool, too. He admits to having been in a state of perpetual arousal the entire four years of highschool and says that if he had not found a girlfriend fairly early, he would have looked like a Wookie long before graduation.
You ought to hear his recollections on this subject, and the ethereal quality his voice takes on as his eyes glaze over and he drifts into a trance, remembering and describing those heady days of girdle watching, those days of forbidden visual feasts. I still don't completely understand it, and he says that it is not possible for me to completely understand it because I am a woman. Maybe so. Men and women are so different!
From Suzanne:
I found Susan's reminiscence incredibly moving and well-written, a remarkably immediate evocation of the male-female dynamics of the classrooms of the period and a wonderfully frank account of the way in which girls could self-consciously use the girdle glimpse as a way of signaling, chaste but powerful, to a boy. I remember using the dynamic between my girdle cuff and skirt hem in very similar ways and I'm certain that there were millions of other girls who knew how to do the same. Evidence of this is the fact that the most popular date destination in our area was a marvelous, now-defunct amusement park, where, as every girl and boy in our high school knew, the rides seemed specifically designed to facilitate accidental and inevitable revelations of girdles under short skirts.
From Sunsoul:
Ann's Cartwheel.... one spring afternoon on the grass of the school playing field as I walked her home... all revealed for the blink of an eye.
To this day I do not really know if her intent was other than simply loosening up a little after school. I suspect she may not know herself. She was a stunningly gorgeous girl, the daughter of a professional model, sophisticated in manner, a master of seductive gesture at sixteen. But gesture fresh with the innocence and playfulness of youth; constrained by a "proper" up-bringing; compounded by a coy secretiveness which made it impossible for me to know, then or now, where that cartwheel. Contradiction, really. Proper girls don't do cartwheels while wearing skirts.
When I think about it now I realize that it was likely just her exuberant tomboyness defeating propriety. I think it was Durrell who wrote that tomboys make the best women -best in his particular meaning at the time. Though I may get stoned for it, I tend to agree.
From Bunny:
My most enjoyable time wearing a girdle was when I was playing 'cello in the school orchestra in southern California in the '60s. Because it was inevitable that every boy in the group was going to get a glimpse of what was under my skirt, I decided they would have something interesting to look at. I had a large wardrobe of colorful girdles, stockings, and other lingerie that I wore to rehearsals. It became a standing joke with me and one of the boys in the orchestra who was a friend of mine.
I did two big mural projects in school where I had to work on a scaffold, and made a point of wearing my best underwear when I was painting. I enjoyed my lingerie, but the boys I dated in high school disapproved of girdles and did so loudly and tactlessly. Their attitude could be summed up as "I can't enjoy myself with you when you're wearing all those contraptions." I once had a date come to my parent's house for dinner when they were away. I wore my best strapless bra, a girdle, and my sexiest dress. He thought it was absolutely useless, wolfed down the meal and went to the basement playroom to shoot pool and ignored me. When I tried to cuddle up to him, he said, "How am I supposed to get you out of all that?"
Continue to Part Two: More Girdle Glimpses
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Last updated October 17, 1997