1.The Appeal Of Girdles For Some Women
I just want to add the perspective here of a woman who was also inundated with images of girdles in the sixties. While I'm sure most women probably didn't like them, and were happy to abandon them for pantyhose, there were many women, myself included, who developed an attraction to them, a kind of mirror image of what the men were feeling. In my case, I know why this happened, I think. I was the youngest of four daughters of a very elegant mother. We weren't rich, but my mother had an amazing sense of style and grace. She always dressed beautifully and always dressed us beautifully. From a very early age, I learned that dressing up was a great privilege and pleasure of being a woman, an expression of gender identity. She always wore skirts, nylons, and of course, a girdle. And we, my sisters and I, had the sense that the same was expected of us when we became women. My sisters and I would play dress-up with my mother's old clothes and girdles.
Anyway, when I was a girl, I wanted nothing more than to be like my sisters and mother as soon as I could be. I remember being ten years old, with everybody getting ready for school in the morning (the four girls sharing two bedrooms) and the whole place being a flurry of girdles, slips, crinolines, nylons, my elegant mother coming in to help with difficult back garters, etc. and hating, hating the fact that I was only ten years old.
I remember the first time I was allowed, after all that waiting, to wear a girdle. It was Easter Sunday, 1962. I can still remember the joy of that "first girdle" shopping trip, being allowed into the inner sanctum of the corset shop. I remember the pleasure of feeling myself wearing the dress I wore, with hat, gloves, and a tight little girdle with real nylons. I was officially a woman! And I pestered my mother until she allowed me a few months later to wear them all the time.
I remember loving the ladylike way they made me look, walk, and sit, the way my girdles hugged me, held me in, reminding me at all times of my adult femininity. I never lost those feelings and they were even intensified when I began to date. While others have mentioned the fact that they served as chastity belts (which they did), there's also the fact that their tightness in that area (I must blushingly admit) increased the erotic arousal of a date, while providing protection at the same time. I liked them so much that, like a small minority of women, I didn't give them up when pantyhose came in. I continue to enjoy them, and they continue to mean to me what they've always meant. I suspect I'm not alone.
So, I guess my point is that all of us who were inundated with the culture of girdles back in the sixties were affected by it, whether we were male or female.
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Copyright 1995 by Suzanne. Used with permission of the author.
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Originally Posted April 20, 1997