Tighty-Tights

Not a fabulous picture, but also not an easy shot to take

Of all the 348 posts that have so far graced this little corner of the internet (I know! Three-hundred forty-eight! So. Much. Blather.) the one entry that has provoked the most reader comment is this one I wrote about the fashion faux pas that is the pantyhose. (That are the pantyhose? Pair of pantyhose, like pair of pants, has never made good grammatical sense to me.)

Pantyhose clearly are out of fashion, but what do we women who are past the first blush of youth do about our no-longer-beautiful legs? It would be nice to think that my legs have the shape and skin tone to stand up (Haha! See what I did there?) to public nudity, but the sad truth is that their shape is mostly derived from spider veins holding hands. Can I still cover them with pantyhose or is that just too, too, opposite-of-de rigueur? I asked you, my Fashion Council, to weigh in on this weighty subject.

Weigh in you did.

"No pantyhose! Never, never, never!" some of you cried.

"Pantyhose are permissible, but only sheer, and only with closed-toed shoes in a formal setting," one fashionista declared.

The grand majority, though, were like the Who's down in Whoville raising your voices in a mighty and united chorus:

"TIGHTS!"

Tights are the ONLY way to be fashionable without sacrificing warmness, you said, and there was no wiggle room whatsoever in this opinion. So rather than risk being a Fashion Don't it was off to WalMart to see what was available in the way of tights. I came home with all the colors of the rainbow, assuming the rainbow is made up of dark brown, heather grey, and black tones.

This morning I pulled out the brown pair and prepared to be fashionable. This is what I found:

People, this is the fully-extended top of the tights. It is intended to travel past my milkmaid calves, pudgy knees, and way-too-amplitudinous hips to settle around a waist permanently extended by lugging around 30 pounds worth of unformed humans for a total of three years.

Maybe you don't quite understand the full import of the photo above. How about this?

These tights are the same size at the top as my camera case.

Still, I've never been one to shrink from a challenge. I squirmed my fist through the right leg and started pulling it on. Surprisingly, I was able to get it all the way on that leg, although I had to stop and rest before I tackled the left leg.

As it turns out, tights apparently are made of some kind of modern miracle stretch fabric. I not only got them on, they make me feel young and sleek.

Kind of like this.

Oh, it's good to be fashionable.