(2011)

I just read in Slate that panty hose are out of fashion. Maybe extinct even. Something about Michelle Obama hating them. I hadn’t noticed. Which is odd in that I notice women’s legs all the time. I guess I just thought panty hose had gotten super sheer. Didn’t realize they weren’t there. To be honest I hadn’t thought about it. Had they been seamed I would have thought it. I think about those when I see them. And those dark ones. I think about those. And fishnets, though you don’t see them too often anymore. At least not on nice girls. But since I personally don’t wear panty hose I don’t think about them much when they’re not right there on legs walking in front of me. Some festishist I’d make. Sorry of this disappoints anyone. I’ll try to think about them more in the future. And while I understand that this  might be the least important news story ever and that actually I read only about every fifth sentence, and after a while no sentences at all, it does beg a question…..

You see last time we were in Chicago in the end of November it was a Saturday night, downtown was jumping, couples everywhere, and the temp was in the 20’s. Chilly. We were bundled up like it was a zillion below, of course, being from L.A. The Chicago girls, though, were stepping out, feeling good and wearing short skirts. Not really short, but short enough to make me think lady, aren’t you freezing?  I mentioned my amazement to my wife. She’s from Milwaukee, remember (i.e., from north of Chicago) and pointed out that they were wearing cold weather hose. Really? Yeah….it’s actually quite warm, as long as you keep moving. Which these ladies were, scuttling up the sidewalk into the wind.   But couldn’t they just wear jeans? Well, yeah, but you can’t show off your legs in jeans. Besides, when it’s really cold, you wear jeans over your winter panty hose, and slip them off in the ladies room. But tonight’s not really cold? It sure as hell felt really cold. When  you caught a blast of wind blowing up from the lake, in fact, it felt really cold. My wife shivered  and nodded …it feels cold to us, but to them February is cold. They live here. You can still wear skirts in late November, when it’s just chilly. And I watched leggy Chicago girls waiting for a street light to change and hiding behind their dates from the wind. They did look good, though.

Which gets to my point….does the end of L’eggs mean that there’ll be no more skirts in frigid Chicago? I mean those chicks would have died barelegged. Is it pants nine months of the year up north from now on? I mean if you are heading downtown in Chicago you will have to walk some distance..there’s no parking anywhere. What’s a girl to do? Wear jeans and long underwear under her skirt? Has it really come to this?

This sounds like an episode of the Mary Tyler Moore Show.