The tights mishap

So, here I am attending my first ever professional librarian conference in Seattle, Washington (my home away from home) and am doing my best to get it right. When packing for the trip, I selected mostly clothing on the casual/comfortable side of professional on account of you never know who you might bump into and what opportunities may be available to you (as it turned out, there was nobody and nothing, respectively, but, again, you never know). And, knowing that I'd be walking all over hilly downtown Seattle, I selected stylish, yet comfortable, boots to navigate the terrain.

The first discussion that my traveling companion, *Heather, and I chose to attend was, of course, on the other side of the urban landscape. No matter, the weather was ideal for a city trek and it felt good to be out and moving.

Because I would be co-hosting a reception for my graduate program later that evening and didn't know if I'd have an opportunity to return to the hotel to change my clothes, I selected an outfit that could be construed as "business casual," as that had been what I was instructed to wear for the reception. And, again, you never know who will be there. As it turned out, nobody with a job offer was following me around like a lost puppy - and if they had, I'd likely be wary of said offer. But Internet Celebrity blogger, iAsshole, was attending! She was surrounded by, presumably, a hoard of fans trying to acquire some tongue scrapings when iAsshole wasn't looking.

Here's what I selected for the day: a black cashmere sweater (ribbed for my pleasure), a black skirt that fell a good three inches above the knee, kicky chartreuse tights by DKNY, and black mid-calf boots. To accessorize, I added a lovely long scarf that was a sheer black with green stitching in a fancy way and, of course, my green-framed specs. Even Heather told me that my outfit was adorable (thanks Heather!), so I felt confident that I could blend in with the cosmopolitan Seattleites without a hitch.

Unfortunately, there was a hitch.

My elastic in my lovely kicky tights had, unbeknowst to me while I was dressing, decided to go suicidal on me and, about halfway into the walk to the Westin Hotel on the other side of town, slowly started to creep downward.

Uh oh. I saw where this was going.

I asked Heather to stop and pose as a barrier for me so that I could stand near a building and pull up my Southbound tights. So not very cosmopolitan. I couldn't tell how far South those tights were willing to go, but it seemed prudent to stop and hike them up as they were loitering at the fullest part of my ass.

Another two blocks later, the top of my non-elasticized tights were hovering at the equator of my ass again and I just couldn't foresee stopping every block to hoist them up. So I decided to grin and bear it. Or, to bear it anyway.

By the time we walked in through the grand entry of the swanky Westin Hotel, my tights had fallen down the slope of my ass and were pausing at the tops of my legs and I wondered what could possibly hold them in place at that point. An image flashed in my head of my attempt to look dignified while the tights were bunched around my ankles, preventing me to take a stride any longer than four inches. As we took the escalator to the fourth floor, I tried to calculate how much wiggle room I had from the tops of my legs to the hem of my skirt.

The overcrowded discussion meant that we had to sit on the floor. Somehow I was able to manage this sans incident. When the discussion ended, Heather asked what I wanted to do. I told her that I needed to get to the Nordstrom we'd passed stat and purchase a control garment to hold my tights in place for the remainder of the day. Sure, there were probably some other places where a desperate woman could purchase a control garment, but the Nordstrom was closest. She was fine with that and relegated herself to the shoe department while I sought freedom in the form of constraint.

Now, I have mixed feelings about control garments in general and have, for the most part, opted out of partaking in what is so clearly a man-made accoutrement. Worse yet, the damn things come in sizes small and extra small! What on earth would someone so tiny need with such a thing? And just to rub it in, the photos on the tags of these garments revealed a very slender woman - perhaps a size 2 - donning such an item, apparently to show that it is, indeed, slenderizing. I growled at these tags and pulled a couple of different styles in my size. As I pulled on these torture devices, I wondered how they were supposed to create a slenderizing effect - unless I were to cover every inch of my body with them. Sure, everything inside of the garment was contained, but then the distinction between the inside and outside of the garment was drastic and looked freakish. Ironically, I purchased the girdle (these were girdles, weren't they?) that was the LEAST tight so that - should my clothing hug my body at any time throughout the day - I would not resemble a sausage attempting to escape its casing.

Now, more so than ever, I remain of the opinion that control garments seem most suitable for those wishing to trans gender.

*not her real name