Leggy laments: The spidery and the stumpy (girly whinge post)

[Tabouli]

Ahhh, body image. Time to muscle in and claim some whinge-space...

Elkins:
> I have long legs, you see.  And the thing about the people who make 
tights and hose is, they don't really believe that women are 
*allowed* to have long legs.  Or they think that if women *do* have 
long legs, then they must be really really *thick* legs as well.<

(Tabouli, who wasted endless hours of her adolescence staring mournfully at her legs in the mirror and *willing* them to grow long and slender, rummages around in her heart to find sympathy for the leggy Elkins, but emerges empty handed, and instead mounts her soap-box, standing on the very tips of her toes)

Haaaang on a minute here.  You long-legged types think you got problems, huh?  Huh?  Ha!  At least long legs are in fashion - spare a thought for us stumpy types!

How do you think we stumpies feel watching the spidery parade of models and actresses sashaying through our billboards and TV screens, and reading lyrical passages all over the place about long, elegant, Bambi-like limbs?  When we end up spending our life's savings on having every lower body garment we buy taken up at the hem, and suffered in silence through the very groovy fashion a few years ago for bootleg trousers with embroidery on the bottom?  When *our* pantihose fall into wrinkles around our ankles unless hitched up every 5 minutes to our armpits?  When we risk lifelong back and foot problems trying to compensate with 5" heels?  (not me, though - after a brief, wobbly flirtation, I've decided to cap my heels at 3" and wear 'em sparingly, having discovered that carefully selected clothing, long boots and backless shoes give illusory length without bodily damage and wobbling).

I think the real problem here is that the system they used to set the standard sizing in women's clothing is, as I read somewhere, based on just post WW2 statistics and no longer anywhere near accurate.  At the time, women were shorter and thinner and carried their weight differently, presumably because of diet.  Another problem is that women's body shapes vary considerably more than men's do, thus making it harder to mass-produce a series of appropriate sizes.  I'm always getting things altered, because (a) I seem to range from Australian size 8 to size 12 across different parts of my body and therefore nothing ever fits off the rack, and (b) I'm vain and finicky enough to spend money on making my clothes fit properly (!).

Interestingly, after a visit to France my supervisor commented that the French seem to make clothes for the shape women really are, not some strange non-existent ideal.  Musing on the French stereotypes I know of, this isn't too surprising, though I'm interested to hear denial or further confirmation of this from European listmembers!  When visiting Asia, I suddenly went from an Australian small to medium to a large to extra large (I confess to flinching).  I've also been known to try on (very pretty, albeit pricey) clothing from the British chain Monsoon, only to discover time and time again that it's hopeless.  'What *shape* are those British women?'  I found myself despairing...

Of course, the worst thing of all is that so many women spend so much time and energy and misery fretting about the size and nature of their deviation from the media body ideal.  Terribly depressing.  It's enough to drive anyone to the Internet (the great leveller, where the inside's all that counts because it's all people see...)

Tabouli.


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