I shaved my legs today for the first time in, oh – I don’t know, three months? Can’t say why I let them go/grow but there is something about the endless cold and constant of underwear that reaches to your ankle bones that simply doesn’t inspire one to tend to leg hair. Besides, my husband only just recently noticed that I had stopped, so it can’t be that big of a deal to men despite the fact that smooth silky legs are sold to women by advertisers as being some sort of aphrodisiac. This is probably only the second or third time in my life that I have allowed the hair on my leg to attain noticeable length. The first time was against my will as my mother refused to discuss the possibility of my shaving my legs until I was fourteen, and at the time in spite of my fury with such an arbitary decision, I felt grateful to be allowed to shave my armpits as soon as it became noticeable. The second time I was in my mid-ish twenties. It was the summer that the first of my high school friends, Amy, got married. I wasn’t dating and being a red-head naturally my leg hair was very light in color. You couldn’t see it unless you were inches away and no one was interested in getting that close at the time. I found shaving tedious and like many young women reserved shaving for times of actual relationships that might involve – up close inspections. I spent a lot of my twenties unshaven. This latest hirsute state was not due to lack of anything but rested more upon the cold and the dry air up here which has caused me to limit showering time and use a lot of lotion. Shaving promotes dry winter itch which is not a fire that needs fuel. Now that the weather is warming (notice I didn’t say “warm”) and I have had occasion to wear a bathing suit (and the fact that when he did notice the hair my husband was visibly shocked – though not put off), I decided that perhaps it was time to mow. I dulled only one razor though it was a quarto-bladed one and now have smooth legs from a few inches above the knee to the foot on each leg. It is a remarkably sensual feeling for the first few hours. It also really accentuates the deathly white pallor of one’s winter hide. Just for fun, I googled up the history of shaving for both men and women. Men, it seems shaved for reasons sensible and not so, but women – unsurprisingly – were the victims of advertising that played on their deep-seated body image problems. Leave it to the “beauty” industry to get ugly.
Women’s Fashion
I ran across an article on BoomerGirl today about the importance of a good pair of white pants for the summer season. It reminded me of when I was young and I actually believed bullshit like that. No one outside the health care profession, unless they are in the Navy, should ever wear white pants. Those white trousered models in magazines, prancing through sunny fields or sipping sweet umbrellaed cocktails at French looking cafes, are not real. They were created with sophisticated computer graphics programs like the ones George Lucas used to make the new Star Wars trilogy. White pants cannot be worn by ordinary women. Not unless they really want the wide thigh look and are okay with strangers knowing everything about their underwear from color to make.
I haven’t willingly tried on a pair of white pants since college, forget about owning them. It seems to me that every year when I run across the must have list for summer fashion, the article that inevitably extolls the “essentialness” of white for the lower half of the body, and I am not really sure why. White, you would think, can be combined with any color, but that is just not true. White can really only be worn with navy, and the ubiquitous navy top is always a part of any white pants photo spread. It creates a decidedly nautical look. Kind of Kennedy Hyannis Port. On a real woman though it looks more like the Madeline type of fare your mother would dress you up in when you were five.
Just to prove my point that white should only be the color of sheets and wedding dresses (every single time too) and not pants I found this link on MSN that discusses the do’s and don’t’s of wearing said pants. Rules? I think that if rules are necessary for the wearing of anything it is a sign to run away from said fashion.
I can remember a pair of baggy white pants that I owned my sophomore year in college. I even have a picture of me in them that I won’t be posting here, but they saw me through that spring and summer. Wore them to Busch Gardens in Tampa and to a house party that twins, Lisa and Laura, hosted unbeknowst to their parentswhile they were away. It was my first and only visit to a Chicago suburb, Naperville , and a really cute, but incredibly drunk, frat boy puked on my matching white Keds. I loved those pants. I matched them with every type and color of shirt and sweater imaginable. And god did they make me look like the Stay-Puf man from Ghostbusters. Yes, I know you are supposed to buy white pants a size larger to avoid this. At least I know it now. But if those pants had been any larger, my roommates and I could have worn them at the same time.
White pants, like removing the neckline of sweatshirts, are best left to fashion ghosts past, and fashion advice in general is better ignored. An article this week in the Edmonton Journal extolled those of us over 40 to use the Annette Bening test when dressing ourselves. Apparently past 40 women have less fashion sense than we did say back in the 80’s, although frankly I don’t see how we could have possibly been more hideously dressed then in the era of big hair and dressing like a White Snake hood ornament. But, the article assures its readers that the worst fashion faux pas’s are committed by old women who dress too young and think, mistakenly we are lead to assume, that they are still attractive. Notice I didn’t use the word sexy? Women over 40 can’t be sexy. Consider yourselves informed. One of the funnier quotes from the article discusses how AB, as they refer to her, would never be caught wearing “a tiny, gut-hugging T-shirt that reveals her bra straps” and though this is likely true, just about every teenager I have taught in the last two years looks just like that and it really is as horrifying an image as it sounds. Perhaps the AB test should know no age limit, eh?
Much of what passes for fashion looks horrible on nearly all women no matter their age. There really is something to the old adage of keeping it simple. Thankfully I have never held a position that required a fashion sense from me and my new position of hous frau hasn’t changed that. A nice fitting pair of jeans and a t-shirt will take a girl far, or far enough anyway, but white pants will only land you on the don’t page of a fashion magazine with a black dot over your face.
anniegirl1138 
