Too Hot For Hose

We have to go to an affair tonight. In the old days I would describe an affair as an event I would have to dress up and wear panty hose to. But times have changed, kind of. More and more women have stopped wearing panty hose, which is evident by how hard they are to buy.

Growing up in the sixties I was witness to the change from stockings and garter belts to panty hose. As well as the change from buying your leg wear at the local department store or lingerie emporium to getting panty hose at the grocery store. I distinctly remember the fight between L’eggs and No nonsense, you know the ones in the orange plastic bags, for who could make the cheapest product and gain the most market share.

Quickly the free thinking hippie days with maxi dresses and no bras of the sixties gave way to the all buttoned up and dressed like a man suits of the late seventies and early eighties. Heaven forbid that I went to a job interview in 1983 with out hose on or without my little long looped bow tie from the new woman’s department at Brooks Brothers.

Today things are not so clear. The women at the Needlepoint Council Roundtable were on both sides of the hose aisle when discussing dressing for and affair like a wedding. The problem for me is that my legs are just not that great and are helped out in a huge way by hose. Really my leg wear of choice is black tights, but it’s much to hot in early September to wear tights and certainly not black, yet.

I don’t know why I am even worrying. No one at this event is going to be looking at my legs anyway. The advent of Spanx has given women the freedom to have bare legs and a squeezed in tummy and butt all at the same time. Control top panty hose used to the solution for keeping the giggiy bits less so. Also self-tanning lotion has added color to the otherwise pasty parts so no “Suntan” shade of hose is needed.

Somehow I still feel less dressed up not in hose, but happier at the same time. I am thankful that my always perfectly dressed grandmother is not alive to witness the loss of hose as a requirement. She used to wear a linen Doncaster dress with hose and spectator pumps to sit by the swimming pool. Thank goodness those days are gone, but I have to say her legs always looked great.