Pantyhose: Not That Great Actually

Girl With A Curious Life, Guest Contributor

Chances are, you don't know me very well so I thought I'd tell you a few things about myself: I love my spastic dog, who is currently sleeping on my lap like he owns me. I am the vainest person I know, after my grandmother. I hate pantyhose with a passion that is usually reserved for oven scrubbing and moldy grout (also things I hate passionately). Fortunately for me, there are chemical products that help me avoid moldy grout and I have minimized my use of the oven so I no longer have to scrub it. Pantyhose? They still haunt me like the vindictive bastard accessories that they are.
I actually looked up the history of pantyhose to see where we went wrong in our fashion evolution. It seems the Wikipedia entry was written by a crazy person who describes the damned things as 'attractive in appearance'. Read the link for yourself; feel free to roll your eyes.

My personal dislike for the pantyhose goes back to the time I was about 13 and my mother decided that while it was not socially acceptable for me to shave my legs, it was a social necessity for me to wear pantyhose. Back in the day, no self-respecting mother would allow her daughter leave the house with bare legs. My mother took this one step further and recognized that my newly developing body should be properly secured by pantyhose to prevent any jiggling, moving or otherwise unladylike behavior. I feel the need to emphasize that I was 13. My hatred for the damned things wasn't immediate because it seemed like I was one step closer to being a grown up. It was also a freezing winter in Tehran and I could use every layer I could get. But reality started to set in soon. The tightness that felt like my insides were being choked, the inescapable sticking to my skin and the fact that my hairy little legs looked like masked robbers all the time. And worst of all? Not wearing them wasn't an option. My hairy legs and potentially jiggly derriere were stuck with pantyhose for life.

Fortunately, I moved back to the US when I was 18 and after suffering a hellish summer in Arizona, I realized I could shed the nylon skin. I began to breathe. My insides were not constantly crushed. My bum occasionally jiggled. Oh, and I finally shaved my legs. Life was good. It was around that time that pantyhose started declining in society as a whole. Women who had once burned bras but were still prisoners to pantyhose started going without more often. Casual work attire and more acceptance of slacks allowed pantyhose to run where ever they liked, as long as they didn't run on us. We were collectively free for a few years and could enjoy the air on our skin and lack the of compressed intestines. Until an enterprising (and slightly masochistic) young lady seemed to miss the suffering brought on by pantyhose and designed Spanx. All the compression and jiggle prevention without making your (hairy) legs look shiny, and it is called 'shape wear'. I understand that there is still a segment of society that appreciates pantyhose, I try not to judge them. I try to not look at people who find pantyhose sexy like they've lost their minds, and I actually encourage men who want to try it on. Payback's a bitch and men love bitches. But I successfully avoid wearing pantyhose unless I'm going to a funeral, a job interview, or any other situation I don't want to feel comfortable enough to be complacent...