2. The Girdle Glimpse
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?
Continue to Why Girdles Became Unfashionable
Copyright 1995 by Suzanne. Used with permission of the author.
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Originally Posted April 20, 1997