Avert Your Eyes

What red bloodied male amongst you blippers needs to wander through the lingerie department at M&S in your lunch hour today when you can have this to delight your eye.

Of course you will say that it is Marilyn Monroe, straight out of the film, the Seven Year Itch, that you notice first, and not the corsets of yester year, but I'm never going to believe you.

Goodness knows what our female forebears had to suffer to produce a svelte body. I am old enough to remember my Mother tying herself into one of these flesh pink boned concoctions with the laces- a kind of laced in torture but less drastic I imagine than having a rib removed to gain an 18" waist as was known before her time.

Even as a young school girl when trousers were not an option as school uniform I had a Liberty Bodice with suspenders attached to hold up my warm woolly stockings in winter.

How lucky we women are now, able to let everything hang free most of the time.
There are of course occasions when the more curvy of us resort to strong Lycra in order to slide seamlessly into that little black dress, but there are no laces or horrible suspenders involved thankfully.

I do remember laughing a very long time ago when a 5 year old boy in my daughter's class uttered the profane remark 'pantie girgle' (sic) when trying to impress her. And yes I confess I may have had occasion to wear one of those things in order to keep stockings up and stomach in, before the days of tights but after gas lighting.