William Blake's Stages of Growing Up

Dear Kim,

When I was in the sixth grade, I was desperate to shave my legs and to wear stockings with penny loafers. I'm guessing that the cool girls wore stockings. If I wore stockings, I would not only align myself with coolness, and I would also signal that I was no longer a little girl.

I was a woman. To be taken seriously.

At that time, panty hose did not exist. At least, not that I can recall. So wearing stockings meant a garter belt with those funny snap fasteners that held the stockings up.

(Kim: I remember finding my mother's garter belt and thinking how strange it was. And later seeing them on my older sister.)

Wearing stockings was a real production. It meant a trip to the drug store to first figure out what size you wore. Opening the cellophane package ever so delicately. Scrunching the stocking into a ball, only to be unfurled slowly as you slid it up your leg, careful, careful not to snag.

I was relentless in bugging my mother and she finally caved in. I remember the incredible sensuality of hearing the stockings hiss as one thigh rubbed against the other as I walked. I admired the airbrushed appearance of my legs incased in an orangey beige plastic sheen. I felt grown up and womanly in my stockings. Wearing those stockings, I possessed secrets. I was Nefertiti, Mata Hari. . . Elizabeth Taylor.

I now understand why drag queens like to wear certain clothes. You experience yourself differently and you signal your difference loudly to the world.

No matter how convenient panty hose became, they can never rival the fetishistic experience of stockings and a garter belt—that delicious contrast between warm exposed flesh and the thrill of the contained.

(Kim: We used to put stockings over our faces to look like criminals. I think once I wore stockings to a costume party. My hairy legs looked funny under the stockings.)

Now the most interesting part of the story for me is that, having gotten my way and worn stockings that year, by 7th grade, at least for the all important first day of school, I was ready to renounce them.

The first day of any school year is a crucial one. You bring out the new hair style you have been cultivating all summer, wear the new shoes that have been purchased for the beginning of the new school year. You buy a new pen and pencil case. It is all about the new.

When I was in 7th grade, it was finally acceptable to wear stockings. To wear them in 6th grade was considered in questionable taste. So I finally had permission from all parties concerned—my mother, Seventeen Magazine, the 7th grade trend setters. And what did I choose to wear the first day?

Anklets. You know, the kind third or fourth graders wore.

Not even knee socks, the bridge between two worlds.

No, anklets. White anklets.

And why, I do not know.

Maybe the air on my bare legs felt more freeing than the saran wrap of stockings.

Maybe I had tried “adult dress up.” Had demanded to try it on my own terms and timetable. And having ventured out, I was ready to come back in. To reclaim little girlhood.

At least for a while.

Later,

Joan

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