Fiction as a reflection of social trends.
The April 1975 issue of Redbook magazine contained a remarkable document: the tale of a young Canadian girl faced with an unexpected pregnancy. Contained within the work of fiction was the single most eloquent expression that I've read of the anti-girdle backlash characteristic of the era. The sympathetic description of the girl's travails is far more effective than any dozen ideologically-based polemics; such is Ms Truss's narrative power that even the most die-hard girdle partisan is forced to stop and consider her assertions.What follows are a few passages from the long novella, presented to examine perceptions of the girdle current in the mid-Seventies. The story itself was eventually published in book form (Harper Collins, 1980); it is currently out of print, but perhaps a search on Bibliofind or Alibris might turn up a copy. Ms Truss has several other works listed on Amazon, those interested can follow this link.
-Virginian
As we pick up the story, we find Angela Moynahan, new high school graduate, staying for the summer with her English grandparents. Shortly before leaving for this first-ever visit to her mother's homeland, she has discovered that she is pregnant. Will she be forced to give up her dreams of a college education? With the summer progressing, she finds her body changing...
The dress she had worn on the plane, when she had been slight as a morning shadow, she could no longer wear. She stood in front of the wardrobe mirror sideways and tried to draw in the bulge. She tugged the dress to try to smooth the tight wrinkles away from her hips. If she held her breath and pulled her stomach in hard, the dress might pass, but it was not possible to hold in for long.
On the Tuesday of the second week in August she made an excuse to leave work early, thus avoiding having Mike walk her home, and she cycled across town through the heavy traffic to the anonymity of a large department store, where she bought three strong panty girdles. She chose those that looked like suits of armor and had reinforced fronts guaranteed to hold in sags and bulges, like the ones she'd always laughed at in the catalogue at home.
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She chose those that looked like suits of armor and had reinforced fronts guaranteed to hold in sags and bulges, like the ones she'd always laughed at in the catalogue at home. |
Before she left the store she disposed of the wrappings and pushed the girdles down to the bottom of her peacock bag, wanting no strange evidence around for her grandmother's eyes to spy.
Next morning she turned the key in her bedroom door and tugged and twisted herself into the unfamiliar, tight, rubbery constriction of one of the girdles. She hid the other two under a rolled-up dress in her flight bag and then stood like a model in a catalogue, posing in bra and girdle, but not quite like a model because her ribs made corrugated patterns through her skin and her arms looked pathetic. Still, the girdle seemed to do the trick. She sighed in relief. She was flat again and there wasn't enough flesh to bulge above the girdle to show prying eyes what she was wearing. She began the day feeling firm and comfortably held together, newly encouraged that she surely could maintain her secret for the two remaining weeks.
But it was not that easy. As the day grew hotter and longer the girdle grew tighter. Whenever she could, when nobody was looking, she bent behind the counter and eased its pressure. It curled at the waist, folded over and cut into her as cruelly as wet leather, and she had difficulty not being irritable even with the customers. When Mike walked her home she was torn between whether to linger in the alley with him, uncomfortable, shifting her weight from one leg to the other, trying to ease the cut of the elastic, or rush in out of the hot afternoon into the hotter house that would be smelling of her hot dinner.
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It curled at the waist, folded over and cut into her as cruelly as wet leather. |
"Touchy, aren't you?" Mike put his hands on the black wall behind her shoulders and swayed back and forth above her.
"It's so hot," she said, and moved from one hip to the other against the wall.
"Eh, keep doing that," he said. "It's right sexy."
She wanted to scream, to kick him, and she looked at him with maddened eyes. "Then I'd better go in right now." She pushed against his confining arm. "Wouldn't do to get sexy here in the alley, with all those windows watching."
He held her arms steady, holding her in. She tried to get under them, but he stopped her.
"Say please to Uncle Mike," he teased, and she wanted to scream. She pushed against his arm to no avail, and with horror felt herself crumple into weeping, and she hid her face with her hands.
"Hey, Angie," he said, and gently tried to pull her hands away.
"Hey, Angie, what's up?"
She leaned against him and then drew away. "It's so hot," she said, and sighed, trying not to fight against the cutting in between her thighs. "The humidity gets at people from the prairies," she tried to tell him, and said she'd better go in before she fainted, or something.
Inside, Grandmother was whining and waving three air letters. "She can't find time to write to us but here are two for you from our Dinah. Maybe there's something gone wrong. Two letters. And they're both posted the same day," she said, peering at the postmarks,
Angela's insides felt suddenly empty. Her father! Something had happened to her father!
"And there's this other one," Grandmother was holding up the third letter. "Don't know who this is from. Somebody named Good. Posted the day after."
"Thanks," was all she said as she snatched the three envelopes from the old lady's hand and rushed past her upstairs to her room where she tugged and pulled the girdle off her body until it rested crumpled around her knees- oh, blessed relief- while she lay back on the bed to open first the letter from Damion.
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She tugged and pulled the girdle off her body until it rested crumpled around her knees. |
The letter contains good news: she's won a scholarship. Time to tell her grandmother...
Against every instinct to leave it off and to flop, she pulled the girdle back up around her and tried to smooth out its folded pieces so that they cut less. She went down to placate her grandmother and pay her respects to the saved dinner. She took her mother's letters to read bits of them aloud.
"Well?" Grandma whined, "What was all that about that you had to go upstairs to read it?"
"I had to go to the bathroom," Angela lied, to calm the old lady, "The extra letter was just to tell me my examination results. I got a scholarship," she added, trying to make the atmosphere friendlier.
"Well, I only hope It does you more good than our Dinah's ever did her. That's all I hope." She brought in the meal and Angela noticed that the tea was already made.' "Nice bit of fresh young rabbit," Grandma gloated as she took off the top plate and opened the swimming meal. "Our Dinah got a big scholarship to art school in London. One of the. biggest scholarships in England, gave it all up for that man. Came on, now- eat up. Don't look at it like that."
The girdle cut in again. She couldn't stand the smell of the meat and the look of the swimming gravy.
"Lovely, fresh young rabbit. Saved you a nice juicy leg. Come on- pick it up in your fingers. Come on, me duck- our Dinah's going to take one look at you and think we never treated you to a square meal."
The girdle contracted, squeezed, tied her in knots of pain. She couldn't touch the flesh of that rabbit. What could she do? She frowned to contain the pity she felt for her poor old grandmother, who had put forth her best and was going to have it rejected.
"Grandma." She bit her lip and tried to smile. "Grandma, I don't feel good. I don't think I can eat anything."
The old woman wheedled, "Oh, come on, now, me duck. Try just a little bit. Just a tiny bit. It'll make you feel better to get a bit of something good inside you." She took a fork and the butter knife and broke open the flesh for Angela to see how good it was.
The girl felt her stomach rising, She stood up too quickly from the wound in the rabbit flesh, knocking her chair back clumsily. "Oh, Grandma," she pleaded, trying to hold on to her kindness, "Grandma, I'm sorry. I can't." And before the words were finished she knew she'd done murder.
The old woman's poor face went blank; then the wrinkles formed in patterns of ugliness. "Not good enough for you, is it? I can see you finding fault. I wasn't born yesterday. Not good enough for you. I can tell by the look on your face what you're thinking."
Angela pulled herself in inside the pressures of the girdle and tried not to listen while the tirade lasted. Please God, don't let me answer. Please, God!
"Like your mother. I know that insolent look from her days. We were never good enough for her, once she got her education. Not good enough, we weren't. Ingratitude! If I had my time over, I can tell you there'd be no children nor grandchildren around this house to mock us with their ingratitude. Children! They bring you nothing but trouble and grief. The country takes your boys and you're not good enough for the girls."
Would she never stop? The girdle was like fire in her groin.
"Like your mother. Just like your mother."
"Stop it!" The shout that broke loose was thunderous. "Stop it, you cruel old woman! Stop it! Stop it!"
She looked at her grandmother's wrinkled fingers, clawing against the chest of the colorless woolen cardigan that hung like a dirty shroud from the brittle-thin shoulders, and she wished the shouting had never exploded. How could she ever undo it now? She felt chilled, sick.
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Against every instinct to leave it off and to flop, she pulled the girdle back up around her. |
Assailed by nausea, the pregnant teenager bolts from the house and jumps on her bicycle. Distracted by anger, she pedals furiously, quickly forgetting her churning stomach and the girdle that moments before was "like fire in her groin." A chance encounter with a neighbor reveals to Angela her that mother had her own secrets; as the conversation ends, a polite invitation brings her back to reality.
"We could have dinner together, all of us. If you're still in England."
"Yes, if I'm still in England," Angela said.
Two more weeks. The girdle was pressing in again.
Angela returns to her grandparents' house and comes to an uneasy truce with her grandmother. Each day, she goes to her job at the bakery.
Steve smiled at her as she pushed through the door into the bright shop, into another day with the girdle biting, another day to count against the days to the end of the two months, the time to escape.
Counting the days, sucking in and holding her breath inside the girdle whenever anyone seemed to be looking, hardly eating, hardly drinking.
Counting the days while Grandma behaved as though there had been no tension, no hard words, talking about the next visit and the things to be sure to tell our Dinah.
Counting the days and going up to bed early to get out of the misery of the girdle, to sit propped up by the apple box bookshelves with the dragon shawl wrapped around her, filling the third exercise book, the pages of the journal of this special summer.
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Another day with the girdle biting... |
Finally, it is time to leave for London.
They stood on the platform, watching for the train to come out of the gray rain of the morning. Grandmother was watery-eyed.
"We are going to miss you. We've got used to having you. Don't know what we shall do without you," she kept saying. Squeezing Angela's arm while Grandfather watched down the track and then turned to smile shyly at his granddaughter.
"You see and come back again, me duck, I'll be keeping the bike oiled and polished for you."
Then she was waving to them as the train pulled away Then they were small puppets. Then they were gone. The two months had ended. Finished.
She had the railway carriage to herself, and the wet towers of the city were rattling past the window, street on street, gray city, but going away, retreating. She flopped into a corner and luxuriously stretched her legs along the red seat. "Young Woman leaps to Death From Fast Train," she read, and turned to look at the tracks flashing by.
If I jumped .... poor Grandma would know then.
But it isn't gray out there in the slow fall of the train. It is silver. Silver England. And there's a little boy making waves in a long puddle, waves spreading outward as the train leaves him behind.
No, she doesn't feel like jumping from the train.
Instead she unfastened the waist of her pants, let the zipper down and lay with her hands cupping the small bulge of her belly pressed down under the grip of the girdle. She put her cheek against the plush of the carriage seat, curled her knees up and let herself rock to the motion, of the train, in the luxury of being carried safely in the impersonal, private coziness of the carriage.
Up on the rack there, in the red flight bag, under the shoes, zippered down in a flowered plastic bag, eight weeks' wages were stashed away.
And she still had the traveler's checks in the little book from the little bank in the little town. A hundred and fifty dollars untouched- saved from another lifetime ago. How many lifetimes ago?
From the inside of the peacock bag she fished a battered. red, plastic-covered address book. From between its pages she took a smooth, printed card and the small side of a confectioner's box. The card read: "Jeffrey Jonason," and underneath his address, in Clara's plain hand: "September 6th at 7 P.M."
Mike had printed his address and a phone number on the confectioner's box, and underneath had written, "Any time, day or night."
She let the train window down, leaned out into the rain and tore the cards to bits, letting the pieces scatter slowly in the whip of the wind- the remains of other lives. She let the wind take her hair and buffeted her face, held out her hands and her arms to the rain. It felt good.
Then she lurched and laughed with the sway of the train to the cramped, rocking lavatory, where she took off the girdle. Breathed freely. Pulled her blouse well down over the bulge.
Back in her compartment, behind the closed door, she opened the window again, flung the undergarment into the wind, never saw it land.
Now she was on her own. She could cope.
In London, Angela miscarries, bringing her both relief and heartbreak. She returns home to Canada, but before she arrives, her father dies. After the funeral, she does her best to settle back to normal life.
Angela, with nothing but irritability between herself and her mother, the place not seeming like home, pleaded fatigue and went to her room. While she had been away they had established a routine. She couldn't fit into it yet.
At least she could finish unpacking. Perhaps then she would feel she had come home. She hung up the crushed clothes from the flight bag, shook out the dress she had worn on her flight away to England-long time ago. Under the dress, under the shoes, two panty girdles. She put them, like souvenirs, in the bottom drawer with her childhood treasures- old exercise books with pressed flowers between the pages, school photographs, outgrown pretty clothes she couldn't bear to throw away- in the bottom drawer of the chest her father had enameled white and dressed up with twirly silver handles the summer she was ten.
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Don't you just want to take Angela out and help her buy a girdle that fits right?
I often stop and think about this character- what she might be doing these days. She'd be about forty-five, after all. I picture her living in Vancouver, perhaps, with a successful career, kids... and a couple of control briefs in the lingerie drawer.
-Virginian
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