You'll find garter belts today in the pages of Victoria's Secret catalogue or in exclusive boutiques that sell sexy lingerie. In my day a garter belt was a hateful thing that strapped around your hips with dangling ribbons with metal fasteners that you hooked to the top of your stockings so they wouldn't fall down. There was a gap at the top of your thighs, bare flesh between the stocking and your underpants, not sexy at all, just cold in the winter. So conscientious mothers like mine made me wear overpants on cold days - lots of those in Winnipeg in the winter. I graduated to garter belts augmented with overpants after I stopped wearing long underwear under black cotton stockings. I think they scarred my psyche. I tell you, pantihose are one of the great inventions of the 20th century. Some things you don't get over. I haven't thought of garter belts for years but I'm not over them. And then to increase your discomfort roughly once a month add to that a sanitary belt - I think that's what they were called - an elasticized belt to go around your pelvis with two catches, front and back, sort of a cross between a paper clip and a hook, designed to anchor the tails of a sanitary napkin and hold it more or less in place to protect your underpants during your period. I'm shuddering Why am I telling you this? You're not there, anyway.

Hey, dear reader(s?), not sure of the demographics of my audience, if any, but i am sure that you are younger than I. So I may have to guide you into the past to make my point today. I can't ask do you remember girdles because I am sure you don't. The name Playtex may mean something because you can still buy Playtex brassieres, I think. But I am sure you never personally experienced the Playtex girdle. Made of rubber, very tight-fitting rubber, the original version didn't even have a lining. You had to use talcum power to get it on, and you had to make sure you settled it in the right places because then you couldn't budge it, and it was very hot and got hotter as the day wore on. My worst memory of it was at a wedding I attended in Montreal one blistering June day, and no AC. Scarlett O'Hara, laced up to her ribcage, had nothing on me. I started wearing this medieval garment - no, not medieval, clothes were looser then. I'm thinking of instruments of torture - began wearing it after my third baby was born - a big one, and so was I. I looked very trim in that girdle. Looking back on it, I realize I was trim, weighing less than I do now. But we were all brain-washed then into believing we were FAT. Did Betty Friedan do away with girdles or just with the guilt that forced us into them? I hope none of my readers, whatever size they are, wear girdles. They constrict the brain. Tomorrow I will discuss garter belts. You can look them up.