off the rack and off the hook

The summer before my senior year in high school (so 1979), rompers were a big fashion trend. Terrycloth ones were particularly the shit. For those of you young people who are now gagging or laughing hysterically, all I can say is, it was 1979. I myself had a yellow terrycloth one my grandmother sewed for me. It was fairly modest as such things went: it covered the top third of my thighs, it had a little polo collar, and the fabric was thick enough that I could wear it without a bra and no one would be the wiser. (It also zipped all the way down the front, which feature endeared it to my future ex-husband, easy access n' all.)

But I also had another romper that was store-bought. It was navy blue, thin cotton jersey trimmed in white. Oh, it definitely needed a bra beneath. But, also, it was short. It barely covered my ass. I am astounded in retrospect that a.) my mother let me wear that out of the house and b.) that as self-conscious about my bulgy Polish catcher's thighs as I was, *I* wore it out of the house. Nevertheless, I did. I liked it. And one summer night, my future ex and I were in Oscos buying god knows what (not condoms, no one used condoms in 1979, yo) at like 9:45, right before they closed. It was hot, and I was wearing that super short romper with (wait for it...wait for it...) the other big fashion fashion trend of that summer: Candies high-heeled slides. I remember turning the corner of an aisle and almost bumping right into one of my high school teachers, and being totally embarrassed that he'd seen me so skimpily and sexily dressed. High school teachers are supposed to stay in their coffins when they're not at school, right?, never mind running around in the real world where you could run into them. Geez.

So, Andrea, what brings up *this* pointless trip down memory lane, and aren't you ever going to run out of boring stories of your youth? No, probably not. And I'll tell you. I was reading an article on jezebel about "trashy" sexy prom dresses being in style, and various commenters, from 18 to 50, chipping in with stories and in some cases pictures of what they wore to prom. And I was thinking, in my day, we wore Gunne Sax and they were not sexy. They might have had spaghetti straps, but they did not show cleavage. Or more than the suggestion of what your butt or boobs looked like underneath.

But, as my romper story reminded me, it wasn't as if we were more demure. It was just that what erogenous zones the fashion world was prompting us to show off were different: you could go to your local teenage-girl clothing store and buy very brief shorts that showcased your entire leg and you could buy spike heeled casual shoes and you could buy tight fitted T-shirts and tube tops that came up to your armpits to show off the shape of your breasts and accent your shoulders, but you weren't going to find tops that actually uncovered cleavage or anything that showed your bare belly. If your cleavage or your belly were better physical features for you than your legs or shoulders, too bad. You could only show off what the styles of the day let you show off.

You never need to worry, however, because fashion is cyclical and ever-changing. You just need to wait five years and whatever looks good on *you* will eventually come back. (This whole dropped-waisted dress and top thing that's being seen in the stores now for the first time since 1988/89 is a good example: you couldn't find in your wildest imaginings anything that looks worse on me, so I've got to just try to mercifully ignore it till it goes away again.)

But I'm not sure that you people with penises are totally cognizant of this fact and how it relates to what you see in the street and in the bars, etc. The other day Mr Barma was trying to get me to admit that I like showing off cleavage, and while it is true that I am not averse to it, especially when it gets the men in the orange aprons to go above and beyond the call of duty to find me the shit I need in Home Depot, it is also true that for the last several years all the V-necked shirts in the stores have been really lowcut and all the summer dresses have been cut to show boob. That's the style. You have to buy what's on the rack if it's at all flattering to you. There have been whole decades of my life when my cleavage never saw the light of day, include decades when it was a lot less freckled and middle-aged looking than it is today, more's the pity. Higher-necked shirts were in vogue, and I had to find other ways to look pretty when I cared to.

I'm just holding out for those palazzo-pant, empire-waisted, long sleeve dressy jumpsuits circa 1994 to come back. I rocked those. And I still have a black one from Express in the back of my closet, waiting for the day.

xoxo