Three Christmas Wishes: Stockings, Dolls and Boots – Part 1

Part 1 – Stockings

Being a freckled girl, I’ve never had that beautiful skin that seems to run with the genes of dark eyed people. You know the kind I am talking about, velvety, a lot of times in hues of brown, even colored and rarely with blemish. If there are blemishes, in the mold of moles placed just right, they are always and rightly called beauty marks. Although I am not normally inclined to run my hand across another woman’s arm, the few times that its happened by accident, I have been a bit startled at the sensation; that skin even feels like velvet.

Yeah, that’s pretty much not a description of my skin.

I would like to have that kind of skin.

There are ways to fake that kind of skin.

I have been kind of oblivious to the fact that it might just be worth my time to reconsider those alternatives, but something happened to me the other day that brought it all back.

It was a beautiful black woman I saw walking across the street. She looked like she had just left church, she was dressed quite formally, in a pretty, respectable, church fancy way. It wasn’t her arms and face that I noticed so much, knowing that had I happened to brush my arm up against hers, she’d feel like velvet. No, the thing that caught my attention was her legs. Just a slight tad darker than the other visible skin, they glistened a bit, with the sure hue of sheer, transparent nylon.

Why, I asked myself?

She clearly didn’t have uneven skin tones marked by freckles.

I understood the fanciness of the beautiful woman, I like the tendency of her church community to wear hats and lovely clothes for church, but the nylons took me by surprise. I asked myself again, “Why?” It was a really hot Houston day when I saw her even though it’s December. And I’ve told you, her skin didn’t need the concealing properties of nylons.

It’s possible the answer is as simple as it completed her desire for formal attire in respect of the social and religious activities of her morning. I told you already that I like that about the black women I have seen in my southern Bible belt community. However, having lived in the south all my life and most of it in the deep south of Texas, I have grown to embrace the particular dress code that is southern, white woman. (That is, after all, what I am, in addition to being a dominant melanocortin-1 receptor MC1R gene variant.)

That Southern white look is a classic stereotype. You know the one where we wear ample makeup, big hair, and as little clothing as possible. (My personal, short disclaimers include that I do not wear big hair solely because along with freckled skin I have limp, dank hair that never gets big. Minimal clothing generally means we don’t do sleeves or collars and shorts are almost always proper. We favor what a Mexican chica of mine would classify as beach wear and all near reasonable facsimiles of such.)

This means I haven’t worn stockings in… well… years.

Even if I hadn’t bought thoroughly into the GRITS mentality or wasn’t actively trying to be a cowgirl (I don’t think I have ever seen a cowgirl wearing pantyhose) there are other reasons I haven’t worn nylons.

Those things are seriously dreadful to wear. No matter which version you might like to give a try, those close-fitting, variously elastic garments, covering your feet, the lower part of your legs and most possibly your butt, (actually everything from your waist down in those instances), they can make a girl feel all bound up

I am not about all bound up.

The problems are myriad.

There’s the problem of the crotch working its way down to your knees through what should be for all intents and purposes, normal activity, which puts you into motion trying to hitch them up walking penguin style to the bathroom. (This would be the pantyhose version). There is the possibility that you have some weird, dual leg muffin-top if you go for thigh highs that can possibly in some more hearty leg types create interesting sounds and even more interesting leg burns. Forget garters, garter belts and accompanying nylons; they are good mainly in the minds of men only. The perfectly thigh high, snapped-in-place-silky-leg covering is best considered in still photographs. Not much stays in place otherwise.

None of this addresses the fact that major circulating vessels in your lower half get cut off making elastic band dented skin anomalies that last for hours, depending upon the elastic topped legging you choose to endure.

But I’m going to tell you. That woman who just came from church, her legs looked pretty.

Looking down at mine now, I’m thinking it’s time to venture out a little and in the name of beauty, suffer a bit.

“Santa, you listening?”

I want brown eyed, blemishless, velvety skin sans freckles or age spots. I have been a good girl. Well mostly.

If you can’t deliver the above, put some stockings in my stocking. I’m attaching a picture of what I might like but I’m willing to let you choose the version.

I promise to find a place to wear them that you’ll approve of.”

(You can say those kinds of things when you know who your Santa is…)