Middle-Aged Ladies and Their Girdles

As a child, I lived in dread of nearly everything, especially the inevitable, which I believed included red body hair and sanitary belts.

In a world before Levi's Bend Over slacks and Underalls, women's undergarments were para-industrial, and required a network of pulleys and levers that seemed unnavigable. I thought that, like a bra, this restraint device was my inevitable future. I was going to have to learn it.

Bra (underwire, natch, with 18 hr control), girdle, garter (even though pantyhose had certainly been invented, mine was a household of stocking), slip. Clothes. As we used to say at 'GBH, "I can't see a thing through that corset!" It is really no wonder that I lived in Toughskins until shamed out of them by the 1980s.

Why I bring this up is that today I ordered a foundation garment of such mod'run design and construction, it is apparently sacred. "We admit we are powerless to our flab..." Please enjoy the idea of these religious undergarments before I ruin the effect for you. These are not "higher power" panties, as in, "A Power greater than ourselves can restore us to the size 8 we will never be again." But higher "power panties," as in, they fit higher up your gut than the original.

And that is too bad. Because the idea of a 12-step program to stop rolling out of my pantyhose (now understanding the preference for stockings) while sitting down was giving me hope. I carry you this message all the same. The woman in this photo is much younger than the people who typically purchase from this particular catalog.