THE HISTORY OF GIRDLES

I don't remember my parents ever telling me the facts of life. I got it from my kid friends, and from whatever I could glean from newspapers and magazines.  What I most wanted to know was what women were like. They were all so mysterious.

From newspaper ads I learned that women wore girdles...whatever they were...and froliced around the house in them all day long. That seemed like an odd thing to do, but I approached the problem like a scientist, making no judgments.

 I learned that girls run around in their underwear all day blowing bubbles, sniffing roses and petting kittens. Wow! Who'da thunk?

Boy, whatever girdles were, they were like catnip to women.

Etiquette required the wearing of a gauze curtain with your girdle.

Once the curtain was donned there were books to be read.

I read books in my underwear too, but I didn't get the same thrill from it that women did. Was I doing something wrong?

Eventually women changed. Ads confirmed that they still liked to wear girdles but they preferred to wear them in public where people could see them, in opera houses and buses and parks.

Here (above) a bunch of girdle people meet on a woodland path and they hang out together. Gone are the gauze curtains.

In the ads women traveled all over the world in glowing underwear. They had special clothes to highlight it.

Years passed and at some point young women abandoned girdles and older women took them up.

In a revolutionary move that must have shocked their daughters, the older women in ads decided to wear their girdles underneath their clothes. According to the ads this created a lot of adjustment problems. I guess they rode up or something.

Hmmm...maybe a discussion of mens underwear is in order. Let me think about it.