Monday, January 16, 2012

WTF......Caftans Out of Style? When Did That Happen?

In a charming blog the other day, Cathy, of Still Waters, mentioned that since caftans were coming back into style she went into her closet and extracted a few well loved ones from the cobwebs in the back.....caftans coming back into style???? 

Holy crap.....are you telling me that they ever went out of style?    Not that I care.......they are what I live in 12 months of the year. For the summer I have a bunch of lovely flowing cool cotton jobs and for the california winter I made a bunch out of sweat shirt fleece, and, for parties, from velour (cotton/polyester velour, that is, so that I can wash them in case I dribble bbq sauce down the front at the latest neighborhood soiree).    I keep saying I don't understand things the older I get.....well......it continues to get worse.....I cannot understand why comfort has to be a sin in the fashion world.  I keep hearing decent, sensible people vilified and ostracized for wearing comfy pants with waist elastic and vain and foolish others sanctified because they wear uncomfortable pants with zippers, in which you are OK as long as you don't want to eat, breathe, sit down or, godforbid, sneeze. The world is mad, I tell you. Save those caftans or, when you get to be 80 you will regret it..     Talking about uncomfortable clothing reminded me of the ultimate torture  garment that I wore daily for a year or so back in the 50's.............this is to demonstrate that I too suffered from vanity and foolishness in my younger life.............have any of you ever heard of the Playtex Rubber Girdle?  

To demonstrate that women have always been obsessed to insanity about their shapes and willing to almost  give up life itself to make some body part smaller, let me describe this product of some sadistic mind......male I am sure. As I recall this item was made our of a pink or  beige rubber, lined (or flocked, they used to call it) with a soft, thin fleece like cotton.  This was so that a person would  be able to don the damned thing....that is, schlepp it up over calves and thighs and hips up to waist height without tearing all the skin off the lower part of one's body, or worse, getting it stuck halfway up and  being paralyzed, since it was tough stuff and would bind one's legs together making them incapable of moving.........imagine having to call 911 under such circumstances.   

Once on, it molded all the bulges into a smooth line from waist to thighs.  If you were lucky, the place where the girdle ended on your thighs was not particularly fleshy, thereupon leaving just the smallest dent and not creating a horrific bulge where the girdle ended.  At the waist, however, no such luck.  Anyone needing to wear such a garment always had a roll of fat along ribs and waist which simply created what they now call "muffin top" I believe.  Unless you happened to be long waisted......or was it short waisted?....... in which case one could pull it up onto one's ribs and avoid the dreaded overflow.  This  sadly created a condition which pulled at the skin on your ribs making one tend to lean slightly forward.....aha.......I just figured out why that wonderful Carole Burnett character, Mrs. Wiggins, the secretary to  Tim Conway, had that strange forward lean to her posture.....she must have been wearing a Playtex, Rubber Girdle.    

By the way, getting out of the PRG was easier than getting into it.....one simply rolled it down to one's ankles and stepped out of the roll of wet rubber........ Oh, I am so ashamed......

All of this, however, is only the beginning of the horror story.  The Playtex folks promised that this girdle would make you lose weight by making you perspire (sweat) the moisture out of the fat on your fat hips and belly, thereby rendering you (yes, exactly....)  thinner, if used  faithfully.  Unfortunately, one did sweat profusely inside this hot rubber wrapping.......the cotton lining was supposed to absorb the moisture but it didn't make a dent.  Consequently, you were enveloped in a very peculiar, not terribly offensive but definitely puzzling odor of  hot, wet rubber with just a touch of something else, also not very attractive except to animals who seemed to find it magnetic........embarrassing, to say the least.

If you are wondering why any person in their right mind would subject themselves to such torture, don't be silly.   Women have always done terrible things to themselves in the quest for beauty........witness a 13 year old girl with incredibly curly hair going to bed nightly wearing curlers ....the old kind were exactly like boar bristle hairbrushes (no foam rubber in those days) and hurt your scalp and skull like hell, plus layers of scotch tape pasted across bangs to straighten them and a shoe lace tied around the neck and around the lower portion of the hairdo just above the lower row of bristly curlers which were rolled up facing the neck ...........even more painful than the upper ones.....to create a Page Boy Bob exactly like Ginger Rogers wore in her movies with Fred Astaire.     

Did it work? Was it worth it?  Don't be ridiculous......I can still hear the "boing" of my hair snapping back into all over curls as soon as the instruments of torture were removed in the morning.......including the  bangs.  Why did I persist?  I have no answer to that question.......it is the perfect description of insanity....one continues to do the same thing over and over to achieve a certain outcome and fails miserably every time, yet, one persists endlessly........sheer madness.       


Sob.  It is the story of our lives.

18 comments:

  1. I laughed 'til I cried! Then, I remembered the long-line girdles and bras. I stopped laughing and simply cried. And, how about those three-inch heels with pointed toes? Why did we accept this torture?

    ReplyDelete
  2. And garter belts?

    Why would a 15-year-old girl need to wear a girdle? I think that was the last time for me.

    I had a few great caftans but I didn't keep them. I should have!

    ReplyDelete
  3. A wonderful blog, Lo, and I read it like it was written just to me. I started gaining weight at what I consider tremendous amounts, about 2 months ago. I weigh more now than I have ever weighed, I have no appetite,,,so where in the hell is the fat coming from!!! Today the doctor looked at me with an "I don't cre" look! I was furious. Having never been this overweight, it is very uncomfortable in many ways. Curlers....Never had a problem...thank God! I love your blogs,,,they are not only full of humor, but are very helpful in a lot of situations,,,Thank you,,,xo

    ReplyDelete
  4. In the 60's I dated a girl who wore a girdle and garter belt to hold up her nylons. Removal in the back seat of the Ford was a slow painful process, as I recall. Guys today have only thongs to contend with and everyone has their own apartment.
    Glad caftans are coming back. I always thought they looked great on Mamma Cass.

    ReplyDelete
  5. What a great post. I remember walking around in five inch heels, and now even the thought of them makes me cringe. I am no longer a slave to fashion, don't think I ever was, maybe briefly but got over that in a hurry, and caftans sound like a pretty good idea to me.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Wear what's comfortable, and laugh back at them. They are the crazy ones.

    ReplyDelete
  7. The Playtex Rubber Girdle sounds like a fetishist's dream come true!
    It also makes my adventures with curve control underwear like Spanx - even with the resulting burst sausage effect - sounds like a walk in the park.
    I think we need some tutorials on undies through the ages to really appreciate that we've never had it so good!

    ReplyDelete
  8. memories of my aunt Helen! she would look at people and declare: "good girdle" or "slob, no girdle"! She was always after me to wear a girdle, walk like a lady, wear matching clothes. I could never get the hang of it! So I lived a wanton childhood!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Once again a great post Lo.

    I wore the playtex rubber girdle and had a few giggles reading your apt description of the pantomime of getting into the thing.
    Also the hair rollers that were religeously put in each night and covered with a chiffon scarf to keep them in place. No matter how late I got in of an evening the rollers always went in. lol

    Caftans? they are mavellous, I own 5 at the moment and can't wait to remove the bra when I get in and slip into mine. In fact I am getting to the stage when if I can get away with it I don't even put the bra on to go out, how's that ??

    Another thing was the pencil skirt, I was hardly able to lift my leg to get on a bus having to do a sort of side ways flip and lift movement. lol

    Those were the days......
    Briony
    x

    ReplyDelete
  10. Forgot to mention the plastic long leg pants that I wore at night, I was promised by the manufacturer that I would lose weight if I wore them, needless to say they didn't work. lol
    Briony
    x

    ReplyDelete
  11. The point was, we weren't supposed to let anything we had jiggle, wiggle -- uh, entice the males who are incapable of controllling themselves around a woman whose flesh moves... The full line corset had another major disadvantage -- you couldn't use the bathroom and take care of yourself unless you were double-jointed... The young girls today wearing 6-inch heels will pay for it in another decade... Great post. Great post. Come visit when you can.

    ReplyDelete
  12. You have great recall! I'd kind of forgotten the dampness, and the smell. But I'll never forget the discomfort! Eventually I switched to mostly-cloth girdles, and when pantyhose came along I thought they were the greatest invention ever! I'm very sad that I got rid of my two very-60s caftans. Must be on the lookout for new ones! Thanks for a great post!

    ReplyDelete
  13. Lo, a quick Google search has brought the horror of this device to full technicolour, but even more scary, they are apparently vintage and collectable, and people sell them for $550! Crazy.
    I was introduced to girdles via my mothers dresser, her's were of a 60's vintage though, so slightly more breathable.
    I often wonder if I should get myself some spanx. Then I come to my senses.

    ReplyDelete
  14. I hated girdles and those darn garter belts too.. I slept all night on my face so those curlers wouldn't poke me..but I had good lookin hair! I could use a couple of caftan..I suppose my nightgowns don't count..I love a jammie day every once in awhile:)

    ReplyDelete
  15. "Mrs. (hu-)Wiggins." You're welcome.

    I was lucky. I had straight hair when we had to have straight hair, and even though I STILL ironed it, that didn't take long. Worse were my curly-haired friends who slept on Campbell's Soup cans to try to take some of the curl out. I'm sure that was comfy as hell.

    ReplyDelete
  16. BAhahahahahaha...

    I laughed til I peed.

    ReplyDelete
  17. I too remember the infamous Playtex girdle. How in the hell could we have worn such a tortuous device. One thing good about the Playtex for me was that it turned me into a feminist and changed my outlook at how mind-conditioned this culture is toward women -- especially older and the very young.
    I'm now 71 and disgusted at the present culture which still promotes the ongoing negative conditioning. If my advice means anything -- for the older women please wear anything you dam well please.

    ReplyDelete