More Kate than Audrey

I haven't worn skirts with any regularity since it was fashionable to pair baby doll dresses and combat boots. I may have been a skirt wearer before but it's not who I am now. My husband is not pleased, he likes me in skirts, but I just don't feel comfortable in them. It's as if I'm wearing someone else's skin.

I am a child of the 70's so skirts - mainly denim jumpers with patchwork flowers in psychedelic patterns - were part of my regular wardrobe growing up. But then my parents sent me to Catholic elementary school, an institution where girls were expected to wear a skirt or dress every day and the boys (such the little gentlemen) would try everything short of pining a girl to the ground to look up said skirt. Though there were occasions when they tried that too, but let's just say I went to school with some tough little betches so it didn't happen often.

These little adventures in exploration were not fun for a burgeoning young lady on the cusp of puberty. After all, a girl does not want her first crush to find out that she still wears Wonder Woman Underoos. Our only guaranteed solace was those cold winter days when the girls were permitted to wear pants... But only if they wore a skirt over them. What that achieved I have no idea, but it did stop the boys and their quest for more insight into the female form.

Through high school, when every boy was trying to get up some girl's skirt, until college and the baby doll dress phase I did wear whatever was fashionable at the time - Madonna inspired mini-skirts, rocker-chic jean skirts, nouveau hippie wannabe peasant skirts - but as I grew older I became less interested in fashion and more interested in...

Well...

The state of my legs.

I was always the skinny girl with the stick-thin stems but there comes a time in every woman's life, whether she was super skinny or not (and yes, even Kate Moss if she laid off the heroin - allegedly) when time catches up with you. Or more to the point, with your body. I think I'm more self-conscious now than I was when I was 16, if that's possible. I think I'm just more aware. With age comes awareness but there also comes spider veins, cellulite and, the worst thing possible...

My Mother's thighs.

It's as if on the day of her passing she reached down from the heavens and said, "My daughter, my first born, the one who least resembles me in any way, to you I leave my legacy. That which has been handed down from mother to daughter for generations. I bequeath to you... Saddle bags."

Poof.

So much for those skinny legs that go all the way up.

I could still wear skirts, but they have to be very structured or extremely flowy. Any hint of lycra and I'll be bulging out every which way. A good pair of pants keep everything contained. I feel confident in a good pair of pants. And I can emulate my hero Kate Hepburn with my own affected New England accent saying I don't give a damn to the establishment. Although, there is no establishment like Kate's in the new millennium. Not exactly striking any blows for feminism with my ripstop capris now, am I?

Soon there will come a day when I won't have to worry about a toddler trying to hide under my skirt and I can go back to wearing something a little less casual than blue jeans. One day I won't care as much about the size of my thighs and I can just be me. But for now I'd like to run and jump and frolick without having to worry about flashing anybody a shot of my knickers. I'll leave that for the young Hollywood elite and their penchant for panty-less partying. I've reached an age where, though I don't particularly care for the look of my legs (and I haven't even mentioned the large strawberry birthmark on my left thigh) but I'm okay with letting everyone know that I have better things to do than shaving my legs every day. Verbally. (Doing my best Katharine Hepburn impersonation) I don't have to show you, you can just take my word for it.

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This post is a part of the Parent Bloggers Network and sk*rt - the new social bookmarking website for women, and the men who want to get into their heads - blog blast. I recommend that you check out Sk*rt and maybe bookmark some posts that you enjoy or some of your own. And, if you are so inclined, please vote for my post over there. It could win me some cool stuff. There's no Thigh Master on the list of prizes but I can get past that.