IT WAS EASTER SUNDAY. BEFORE SHE got in the car, I whispered to my husband, “Don’t say a word. She’s a good kid, she loves Jesus, and she makes straight As.”
As our twelve-year-old daughter made her way from the door to the car, he saw exactly what I was talking about. “Got it,” he said. “That’s your department. If you’re fine, then I’m fine.”
Meg was dressed in a Lilly Pulitzer sundress, and I insisted that we add a white cardigan. We were breaking enough fashion rules without wearing spaghetti straps to worship our risen Savior. Easter Sunday pantyhose had been abandoned for bare legs, and white patent leather had been replaced with Nike Air Force 1s. Yes, tennis shoes. My daughter wore tennis shoes to the Easter Sunday service. They were pure white (traditional for Easter Sunday), and she wore them with the same pride I used to have on Easter Sunday in my white patent leather two-inch heels. She had that extra bounce in her step that every little girl gets on special occasions. She knew she looked a little more special than on most Sundays.
A small part of me wondered if I was breaking mom code by not forcing her to wear pantyhose, a full slip, hat, gloves, and carry a tiny purse to pull the outfit together. But the biggest part of me was jealous. Look at her. Living her best life in a beautiful dress, comfortable shoes, and no undergarments to restrict her breathing within an inch of her life. I couldn’t help but think of how far we’d come since my younger days.
I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s, and I, like every girl I knew, had a special drawer filled with pantyhose, slips, and camisoles. I didn’t have to wear them every day but always on Sunday. On Sunday, they all came on for church.
Once, in a hissy fit, I asked my mom why I had to wear all this stuff just to go to church. Her eyes shot daggers into my soul as she said, “So you don’t think you should dress better for Jesus than you do for your little friends?” I never asked again. I wore the pantyhose, the slip, the everything to keep from getting that look.
In my earliest memories, pantyhose only covered your legs, and they had no shaping or control for the hips, belly, and buttocks. You had to buy a shaping garment that you wore along with your hose.1 I remember being at our local department store where I saw a one-piece shaper, and I had to have it. That shaper would solve all of my nonexistent problems. I say “nonexistent” because my body was still forming, and no shaper was going to suddenly make it look like a fully developed body. My mother did her best to convince me of this, but she decided to let me learn the hard way. As soon as I snapped the three snaps at the bottom, I learned a valuable lesson—just because it’s not a G-string doesn’t mean it can’t become a G-string. I had spent too many days begging for this torture device, so I couldn’t let her know in the first thirty seconds that she was 100 percent, completely right. I waddled my way from my room to the den.
“Everything ok?” my mom asked.
“Yes, it’s fine! I love this thing!” I waddled from the den back to my bedroom and took that torture device off, and it never saw daylight again.
I once asked my daughter what she would do if I forced her to wear pantyhose, slips, camisoles, and all the things we used to wear. Her response was as expected: “Mom, stop. Don’t even joke about that.”
I asked my good friend who is a few years older than me what would have happened if she had told her mother that she didn’t want to wear pantyhose and a slip to church. Her reaction was just what I expected.
“Uhhh, no, ma’am. I would have never even told my mother that. It was never a question.” Then she said something I was NOT prepared for. “Do you understand that when I was very little, pantyhose weren’t even one-piece yet? I was a little kid wearing a garter belt to church. Can you picture all these little kids wearing garter belts? Now those things are lingerie for a wedding night.”
After we stopped laughing, she went on to explain that actual pantyhose were such a godsend since they were one-piece, and she wouldn’t dare complain about wearing them.
It never occurred to me that there was something worse than pantyhose. Something so terrible that you were thankful for pantyhose. How far back did these things go?
I thought we wore the undergarments because our grandmothers wore them. In my mind, they wore them in the ’50s and passed down the tradition, so now we all had to do it. As it turns out, I was way wrong. It seems that women have been wearing hose for centuries, and women have been trying to get rid of them just as long.
The first famous woman to wear hose was Queen Elizabeth I. She was gifted a pair by her “silk woman.” That’s right. She had a silk woman, and her job was to make dresses, scarves, robes… Nowhere in her job description did it say, Create something so horrible that girls for century after century will suffer, but she did! I don’t blame the silk woman; she had a job to do. But Queen Elizabeth could have written a lovely thank-you note and put the stockings away, and nobody needed to know. Her dresses went to the floor; her legs were covered. So nobody knew or cared if she was wearing stockings under her dress. But no. She tried them on and LOVED them! And I’m guessing, like a girl in a new dress with pockets, every time someone complimented her dress, she’d say, “Thanks—it has hose.” Then she’d lift her skirt and show her beautiful creation! Other ladies would see them and would HAVE to have their own pair.
One Sunday in the height of summer, I’d had enough. I needed shaping, but my heart couldn’t take the thought of wearing a full pair of pantyhose all morning at church. I had the great idea to cut the legs off my pantyhose just below where the control top ends. I was so proud of myself until I was walking into the church and the small leg part that was left had rolled up while the top part had rolled down. The two rolls met in the middle, and it was all I could do to walk without moving so the roll didn’t go below my hemline. Right leg, left leg, pray. Right leg, left leg, pray. I made it to the bathroom and stuffed my good idea into my purse.
Thankfully, an amazing entrepreneur had the same good idea but found a solution to the legs rolling up! Spanx hit the scene, and pantyhose’s days were numbered. Once we realized that we could have control without the legs, it was a whole new world. She made shaping tops, so you could eat a muffin without worrying about a muffin top. Her shaping garments had everything you loved about pantyhose and nothing that you hated.
That Easter Sunday, Meg slid into the car with ease, not a care in the world about whether her pantyhose might roll down to her knees. Never had to care if her slip showed when she crossed her legs, or about how to keep her bra straps and camisole straps straight. She was beautiful and ready for church service, and that was all that mattered.
I wondered, Could this be happening? Could it finally be over? Could this new generation of girls be the ones to put an end to the long-standing torture that is known as undergarments? What is our future going to look like with all these little girls not knowing the stress of keeping their pantyhose up and their slip down? And I immediately knew the answer. Our future is going to look as bright as the sun.
More than wanting my daughter not to go through my same torture, I wanted her to feel beautiful and confident, not just in her clothes but in her skin. I wanted her to know that no matter the size or shape of her body, she is perfectly and wonderfully made. If she grows to have a muffin top, I hope she can proclaim with pride, “Yeah, it’s because I ate the muffin.”
1 It might have been called a girdle, but I was too young to realize it. I knew it looked like a nude one-piece swimsuit, and it had tummy control and a built-in bra.