{"id":2819,"date":"2009-08-21T21:04:22","date_gmt":"2009-08-22T04:04:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=2819"},"modified":"2009-08-21T21:04:22","modified_gmt":"2009-08-22T04:04:22","slug":"a-case-of-the-human-condition-mad-men-exposes-the-60s-girdle-but-how-will-she-get-it-off-in-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/a-case-of-the-human-condition-mad-men-exposes-the-60s-girdle-but-how-will-she-get-it-off-in-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Mad Men Exposes the \u201960s Girdle \u2014 But Will She Get It Off in Time?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"two<\/a>
The Spirella Sarong, a vintage 1960s panty girdle. Thanks to corsetiere.net<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

I loved the hotel room strip tease performed by a stewardess on the 2009 Mad Men season premiere. The fitted suit. The cloche hat. The pumps. So 1963.<\/p>\n

For those of you who missed the show: A blond stewardess drops her mid-century modest garments to the floor, one by one, until there is nothing left between her, the show’s hero, and their one-night stand, except a girdle, when the hotel’s fire alarm goes off, bringing the assignation to a chilly halt.<\/p>\n

\"Mad<\/a>
Don Draper smokes and ponders his existential angst.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I want to know — if things had gone as planned, how was she planning to get that girdle off?<\/p>\n

You don’t think that’s a problem? Then you’ve never experienced a genuine 1963 girdle.<\/p>\n

When my daughter was eight years old, I took her aside one day and explained the girdle<\/a> facts of life to her. Then I wrote about it for The Oakland Tribune, where I was a columnist at the time. Here’s the story:<\/p>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>The Oakland Tribune, October 13, 1991\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

“What’s a girdle?” Peter wanted to know.<\/p>\n

“It’s something you . . . a woman wears to make herself thin,” I told him.<\/p>\n

“Why not just get a Tummyciser?” said Peter, rolling his belly muscles.<\/p>\n

You could.\u00a0 You could get the Tummyciser.\u00a0 You could do the aerobic walking.\u00a0 You could eat the cottage cheese instead of wearing it on your thighs.\u00a0 Or, you could spend $26 for a navel-to-knee body shaper – and be thin now<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As I see it, the world our children are inheriting fairly oozes with ways to feel better fast – fast food, fast cars, fast sex.<\/p>\n

But this season, there is another quick fix on the scene.\u00a0 Something I thought the women’s movement had banished from the intelligent woman’s underwear drawer decades ago – the girdle.<\/p>\n

There it was, a week ago Friday, a department store ad touting the sexiness of shapewear.\u00a0 Shapewear!\u00a0 You can’t fool me.\u00a0 I remember the ’50s.\u00a0 I know a girdle when I see one.<\/p>\n

Just Us Girls<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I dropped Peter off at a friend’s house and took Christina with me to the mall.\u00a0 Just us girls.\u00a0 There, we located the Bali tailored brief, the Flexees Subtract and the Vanity Fair Slender Slip, as advertised.<\/p>\n

“Do you know what a girdle is?” I asked my daughter as I hung the garments up in our fitting room.\u00a0 Christina, who was eight years old at the time, wasn’t sure.\u00a0 Embarrassed, she pointed at my derriere.<\/p>\n

Good.\u00a0 There was still time to warn my daughter off the girdle, in all its anti-woman, anti-health, anti-common sense ridiculousness.\u00a0 I held up the Bali brief and declared, “No, Christina.\u00a0 This<\/em> is a girdle.”<\/p>\n

It was an extra large.\u00a0 I had grabbed the largest Bali on the rack so I could get it on without too many gyrations.\u00a0 My goal was to make the girdle appear ridiculous in the eyes of my eight-year-old, not myself.<\/p>\n

“I’m not going to buy one of these,” I said, pulling on the Bali.\u00a0 “I’m just going to teach you some history, some girdle history.”<\/p>\n

“I already know enough history.”<\/p>\n

“If you don’t know history, you are doomed to repeat it,” I retorted, grunting a little with the familiar effort of pulling spandex across flesh.<\/p>\n

A Trembling Mass of Flesh<\/strong><\/h5>\n

There is nothing fatter than a woman in the act of putting on a girdle.\u00a0 A girdle has a way of collecting up flesh as it is pulled upward, pushing it in a trembling mass toward the waist.<\/p>\n

The experienced girdle-wearer knows this.\u00a0 Patiently, she works the garment toward her waist and then, with a yank and a wiggle, she snaps the last bit of girdle over the last bit of fat.\u00a0 Her body has been tamed.\u00a0 Spandex rules.<\/p>\n

The Bali in place, I glanced at Christina.\u00a0 “How do I look?”<\/p>\n

“It makes you look worse,” she said.\u00a0 “It’s squashed all the fat onto your legs.\u00a0 Your legs look way too fat.”<\/p>\n

I turned to one side and looked in the mirror, hoping she was wrong.\u00a0 She wasn’t. “Girdles do that,” was all I could say. “Let’s try the Slender Slip.”<\/p>\n

\"8-year-old<\/a>
Christina at age eight at Yosemite: She did not need a girdle then . . . Photos by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Young<\/a>
. . . and doesn’t need one now. Or is she keeping a secret?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Slender Slip was a tour de force<\/em> of modern technology.\u00a0 It was shaped like a pencil-thin slip, but was made of stretchy, leg-hugging material.\u00a0 A panel through the crotch and some rubbery stuff inside the lace at the bottom kept it from riding up.<\/p>\n

I watched myself in the mirror as I pulled it on.\u00a0 I realized that there is<\/em> something fatter than a woman pulling on a girdle.\u00a0 It is a woman wearing<\/em> a Slender Slip.\u00a0 The Slender Slip curves cruelly under the derriere and around the potbelly.\u00a0 It highlights every lump and curve.\u00a0 It is merciless.<\/p>\n

I took it off before Christina could comment and I reached for the Flexees Subtract.\u00a0 Designed to slenderize from waistline to shin bones, this was easily the largest expanse of spandex I had ever seen.\u00a0 I had never worn such an ambitious girdle.<\/p>\n

“This is the ne plus ultra<\/em> of foundation garments,” I said, slipping some French into the history lesson.\u00a0 Carefully, I gathered up the right leg and slipped my foot through.\u00a0 “You have to pull these on a little at a time.”<\/p>\n

\"a
Spanx skinny britches for under jeans. Not a girdle?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I lectured and pulled and lectured and pulled, hoping Christina was noticing what a pain in the derriere a girdle can be.<\/p>\n

A pain in the derriere and a pain in the belly.\u00a0 My girdle memories were coming back to me now.\u00a0 Some I shared with Christina. Others I saved for a later date.<\/p>\n

If a woman wears a tight girdle for more than an hour or two, for example, she is likely to experience stomach cramps, especially if there is a meal involved.<\/p>\n

Or, if she sits in her girdle for very long, she can get girdle burn.\u00a0 The girdle stretches as she sits, causing the tiny holes in the spandex to open up and capture tiny pieces of her skin.\u00a0 When she stand, the spandex holes close up and pinch her unsuspecting flesh.<\/p>\n

And, too, there is the chastity-belt effect.\u00a0 A girdle is not easy to put on.\u00a0 The prudent woman thinks twice before taking one off.<\/p>\n

At last, the navel-to-knee girdle was in place and I looked – terrific.\u00a0 My lower half was at least two sizes smaller.<\/p>\n

“It looks good on the bottom,” said Christina, “but you look weird on top, like raw chicken meat.\u00a0 I like it better when you be yourself.”<\/p>\n

End of history lesson.<\/p>\n

c 1991 TheThe Oakland Tribun<\/a>e<\/a>\u00a0Reprinted by permission<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Christina Update — Twenty Years Later<\/strong><\/p>\n

Did my daughter learn that girdle lesson that I sweated and strained over twenty years ago? Did the lesson stick? I called her up to ask.<\/p>\n

Yes, Christina said. She remembers the girdle lesson. And, yes, she wears a girdle once in a while. But it’s not a girdle, Mom. It’s not a Slender Slip, and it\u2019s not a Flexees Subtract. It\u2019s a Spanx<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And the difference between my girdle-wearing days and Christina\u2019s\u00a0 is — today’s woman doesn’t wear a girdle to impress a guy. “You wear them because you’re a strong, powerful woman and you want to look really fabulous — for yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Christina also wanted me to know, “Girdle technology has changed. There’s no such thing as girdle burn any more.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0. . . And Back to the Mad Men Episode with Don Draper in a Hotel Room With That Frantic-for-Sex Stewardess<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now you know why the script required the fire alarm\u00a0to go off\u00a0when it did. The Mad Men writers had no idea how\u00a0to get that girdle off that stewardess without turning hot sex into farce.<\/p>\n

Hint: If she knew she was going to do a strip tease,\u00a0the stewardess\u00a0would have excused herself to the bathroom, removed the girdle, stuffed it into her purse, and returned to her paramour — fully dressed but girdleless.<\/p>\n

And, no, I’m not going to tell you how I know this.<\/p>\n

If you enjoyed this post, check out “My Upper Lip and Other Sorrows.”\u00a0<\/a> Also, “Shopping for a Mother-of-the-Groom Dress.”<\/a>\u00a0 <\/em>\u00a0 And, “Wedding Dress Shopping: When Your Daughter Lets You Tag Along.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Dear Friends: To get regular updates to my blog, you can subscribe by email or RSS feed, or follow me on Twitter or Facebook. Look for the icons below this story and at the top right of this page. And — I’d love it if you would pass the link to this page along to your friends.
\n<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"two<\/a><\/p>\n

You can’t fool me. I know a girdle when I see one. A stewardess on Mad Men did a strip tease — but how was she going to get that girdle off without turning hot sex into farce? Read more<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,30],"tags":[146,34,148,396,393,397,398,82],"class_list":["post-2819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-case-of-the-human-condition","category-my-changing-family","tag-christina","tag-dont-miss","tag-feminism","tag-girdle","tag-kids","tag-mad-men-stewardess","tag-my-daugter-wears-spanx","tag-on-the-funny-side"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}