Fear the Girdle
Look! ...under our frocks
Girdles and jocks!
Proving we are what we are!
We are in agony. Men who dress as women are one of three things: J. Edgar Hoover, Milton Berle, or gay men on Halloween. The first ran the FBI (and sometimes his hosiery) the second was reportedly well endowed (and often well accessorized) and the last wears high heels and consumes high balls every final Saturday in October. Anatomi-cally, the moment these brave men slip into slingback high heels, they also have higher balls. Add a girdle and some gin—you’ve got the makings of a party.
Kids today who see that SPANX info-mercial wouldn’t know that it’s absolutely cheating to gird your loins with a comfortable lightweight newfangled contraption (which, by the way, produces before and after shots that are both ghastly—as if to say, “I went from a heinous fashion crime to just a plain lumpy mediocre misdemeanor with one garment. Why in the world would you attempt a clinging party frock when you’re 50 lbs overweight? Two words: Moo Moo. Buy one.)
Men of a certain age remember Playtex. Younger men think of Play Tex as line dancing on country/western night. But back in the sixties, the living girdle by Playtex elicited comedienne Phyllis Diller to quip, “I bought one of those new ‘living girdles’ and I don’t know what to feed it.” Well the answer is you don’t need to. It eats flesh.
The girdle. 200 lbs of flesh in a 100 lb sack. And we wonder why our mothers drank? Their ritual every Saturday: beauty parlor in the morning, a body cast at night. My first brush with the agony (and admittedly, the ecstasy) of a girdle starts with a story. Years ago my cell phone rings one Saturday morning in late November and my friend Bobby says, “Honey, I’m at an estate sale in Kalorama and this dead debutante was your size! She was a tall one and she had ball gowns to die for. Get here! Quick.” I scribble down the address and the short version is that an hour later I leave with a floor length, lipstick red silk gown—with a full foot of fur trimming at the bottom. It was hanging there screaming for Rosemary Clooney in White Christmas! I just had to have it. (I support PETA, but the dead deb didn’t) It hung in the closet for nearly a year and then Rehoboth Halloween finally came. I borrowed a girdle from a friend, and with two cocktails under my belt, I shimmied and jiggled myself into it. While my sisters were dressing in their own rooms throughout the house, I was the only one brave enough to man-up—and gird. Yes, it was constricting but really not so awful. Until I sat down. I screamed more than, “White Christmas!” But the perverse must persevere and I went ahead with makeup (through the tears) and my press-on red fingernails—which, by the way perfectly matched the gown. We stop at the first house party and I visit the men’s...I mean ladies’...room.
Press on nails pop off the moment you place your thumbs under a skin tight girdle. Who knew this little cause and effect? It should have been written on the side of the box: WARNING:
NAIILS WILL POP OFF WHEN PRESSURE IS APPLIED SUCH AS ATTEMPTING TO SLIP A GIRDLE DOWN. So my cocktail (yes, the third) is on the vanity and my two thumbnails are lying on the floor beneath the fur trim of my gown. The cockeyed optimist in me thinks “heck, I still have eight perfectly good fingernails and I’ll just keep my thumbs folded into my palms the rest of the night. The realist in me says, “OK, Mary... how you gonna pull that body cast back up?”
Everyone has a special friend. Mine’s name is Jeeves—he’s called that because he’s perfect. I open the door just a sliver and beckon some nearby partygoers to please fetch him. Bless his little heart, he attacks this dilemma with his usual pluck: I lift my skirt, he diverts his eyes and he shimmies me back into my Godawful garment. Having been stripped of both my thumbnails and my dignity—I need a drink. Knowing this consumption will increase the frequency of my pit stops, I ask if he’s willing to accompany me on my now sure-to-be-frequent visits to the laides room and he says, “Next time you go, you lose that damn thing or lose me.” He’s perfect, but he’s not Gandhi. It was a tough choice, but on my next visit, I removed it with my bare thumbs, and carefully placed it under the (appropriately named) vanity. Commando cross dresser coming through!
Fast forward four fey years, and a cute young co-worker of mine is looking for something to wear to D.C.’s legendary Miss Adams Morgan pageant. I tell him about the gown and he’s all atwitter (literally, he’s a kid who can twitter. Hate him.)
He’s younger, smarter, handsomer—one of those who always gets cruised and never gets a blemish. I wish for him nothing but happiness (and herpes)—so I tell him I’d LOVE for him to borrow my treasured gown, and that I even have the perfect shoes to go with it.
I sprinkled itching powder into the gown and nailed a banana peel onto the bottom of the stiletto. I knew he’d either scratch or slip into an early departure—just like poor Cinderella. I handed him the ensemble and said “take lots of pictures!”
For, to be feared anymore than a girdle is a jealous old queen!
Brent Mundt makes a living in Washington, DC and a life in Rehoboth Beach.