10. Why I Wear A Girdle Every Day
Someone recently asked me a question about my wearing a girdle every day. I want to respond to her because her question has caused me to consider why I wear one everyday, and in thinking about this issue, I also find myself thinking about the fascinating remarks someone made about girdles providing a kind of exoskeleton, a kind of shell or armor that provides a strange sense of power. This question is of interest to me also because the combination of poison ivy and extreme heat this summer meant that I spent less time in a girdle than I have in a long time. And that experience has given me some ideas about what it means to wear a girdle.
First of all, I think that xxxx is absolutely correct to suggest that girdles can provide a strange sense of protected power. When I am wearing a girdle, I feel stronger, more focused, more ready to face the world. When I am not wearing a girdle, I feel vulnerable and soft, ready to climb into bed.
Clearly my identity as a person among other people has become interwoven with a garment, that, for me, has always signified adult female engagement with the world. I don't like being seen as other women are seen, with my derriere bouncing freely back and forth, a free and hippy (as in hips) liberated woman of the nineties. When girdled, I feel I have a sort of mystique, a sort of self-respect that derives from my ladylike carriage and smooth, aesthetically pleasing, civilized, and controlled figure. I feel like Grace Kelly or Lauren Bacall. Without a girdle, I feel like a middle-aged woman pretending to be Cindy Crawford or Julia Roberts. It doesn't fit, and makes me feel self-conscious. I could only tolerate it in Europe this summer because it was so darned hot, I was in a different culture, and I was still infinitely better dressed than the average American tourist (it wouldn't take much).
So, this is part of the reason I wear a girdle everyday. In exchange for a slight degree of restriction, I gain a substantial amount of psychological comfort and strength. Several women have observed that they make a point of wearing a girdle on days at work when they have to make a presentation, when they need confidence. I feel that I know exactly what they mean.
One interesting fact that relates to this is that several prominent and powerful female monarchs in history, Elizabeth I, Catherine the Great, and Catherine de Medici, were famous for how tightly they were corseted. There has clearly always been some kind of connection, in the mind of the wearer and in the mind of her audience, between girdling and corseting and female power.
Another reason I choose to wear a girdle everyday is that it represents a fond and stubborn attachment to the standards of dress of my youth. Somehow the standards don't mean as much if they're not strict.
And so, on days when my only public interaction is picking up my daughter from her pre-school, I still dutifully climb into my girdle because I like to pretend, in a way, that the old rules are still in effect, that the old era of compulsory elegance still in some way exists because one slightly nutty lady with too much imagination still chooses to follow its rules.
I enjoy this little bit of eccentricity, as a relief from the drabness of modern suburban comfortable casual channel-surfing America. If you will excuse the egotism involved, it is related to the pleasure I derive from reading serious literature when I'm at the beach, or blaring opera or rhythm and blues music on my car stereo (with the windows closed of course), in an area where the preferred music is Easy Lite FM.
And finally, a very serious, important, and somewhat mushy part of the reason why I wear a girdle every day is that I have come to think of it as a kind of wedding ring. As I mentioned in my resume, I only wore a girdle occasionally while my husband and I were courting (love the word). After he proposed to me (I was dressed up and wearing a girdle at the time, of course), I decided (the decision was actually made the next day, when I was in the library in blue jeans with cotton panties underneath) that from our wedding day forward, I would wear a girdle all the time.
In some ways, I used my marriage as an excuse to fully return to the way of dressing I had been brought up to enjoy. And it was a kind of fun and secret dedication to him, a purposeful intensification of our highly romantic relationship.
It has worked, even though we've gotten older, had a kid, and become much more busy. Even on days when our only romantic contact is a kiss at the beginning and the end of a day, my perpetual awareness of my femininity in my girdle, my knowledge of his pleasure in knowing that I have one on, even though he's not with me, makes me feel so married and so his.
So this, in essence, is why I wear one every day, sometimes against all logic and sense, but always with pleasure and happiness. I'm curious, of course, about what others think about this every day issue. And please bear in mind that I am not advocating anything, just explaining my own personal choice in dressing.
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Copyright 1995 by Suzanne. Used with permission of the author.
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Originally Posted April 20, 1997