Almost Girl

One would think that a visit to Lingerie Americas, the massive lingerie, swim wear, and lounge wear trade show taking place these past few days at the Altman Building on 135 West 18th Street in Manhattan, would make even the most well adjusted girl feel insecure about her body.

However, an entire trade show dedicated to undergarments, halls filled with models showcasing the many wears designed to lift, separate, and titillate, and fully hours of fashion runway somehow translated into me feeling roughly secure about everyone’s bodies.

Surreally, after watching models parade outfit after outfit of lingerie down a short runway and wandering about the many showrooms filled to the brim with half naked girls simply lounging about in their skivvies, I had seen enough cellulite, droopy butts, droopy boobs, scars, bumps, lumps and muffin tops to convince me that even the most “perfect” women have enough flaws to assure anyone woman that they look pretty good naked all things considered. Heck, right now I am so pleased with the quality and shape of my derriere I had no problems trying on the many pairs of free panties I scored in the show giftbags in front of my bedroom mirror.

Now I know I was supposed to be paying attention to the clothing, but somehow after hours of exposure to the nearly naked human form I was completely inured to both body and covering. Lace and rashes, cellulite and satin all blurred together into a composite form of humanity that somehow combined to give dignity to all our bodies. Either that or I so saw many bodies that I simply can’t process the minor gradations of womanly beauty that passed by me such that anything within a relative body type passes as beauty for me now. That includes the models, me, and most decently-attractive-within-healthy-weight women.

That is until I actually uploaded all of
my photos and didn’t recognize any of the women. All of the flaws I saw parade by me on the runway had magically disappeared. It was as if the models had refracted the light around their imperfections, leaving only picture perfect women. This woman here had cellulite to the point where I felt great about my thighs and yet looking at this photo now I think wow I need to start rubbing in the creams I got at the Pierce Mattie event.

Now, I admit that the styling was still skeevy as hell. The models wore candy garter belts and licked giant lollipops as they twirled on the runway.

It was actually uncomfortable to watch these girls go through the motions, because in the end a trade show is still a place where creepy guys from the Midwest gather to do their “thing” and whether that involves buying restaurant equipment or lingerie it is the same set of off color characters. Perhaps the stylist was channeling that perverse anti-eroticism that pervades most of America. And thus we were left with some very off-color aging Lolitas.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 1st, 2006 at 3:36 am and is filed under Beauty, The Business of Fashion, We are Living in Funny Times. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.