Project Happily Ever After

When I was in my 20s, I thought it seemed reasonable to inflict a great deal of pain and discomfort (heels, too tight jeans, perms, push up bras) in the name of love and attraction. So, when my husband (then my boyfriend) bought me thongs and garters, I happily wore them for him.

Deep down, though, I had a secret.  I hated them. The garters were a literal pain in the rear to put on. Getting them attached to a pair of thigh highs required the flexibility of a Cirque de Soleil contortionist. The thongs? Some women claim to love them, but I have just two words for thongs: atomic wedgie. That’s the hate of the love-hate relationship.

Now, to understand the love part of the relationship, you need a little background. First, you must understand that I no longer believe in pain in the name of love. I also now have a wedding band and a kid. I’m 38. I have cellulite. My boobs aren’t what they used to be.

Despite all of this, I can say to my husband, “Sex?” He says, “When, where, and do I need to shower first?” Indeed, he can rise to the occasion within a nanosecond, lingerie or not. I could be wearing my frumpiest of mom outfits or the plainest of white cotton undies. He’d see a sex Goddess. He likes lingerie, of course, but he doesn’t need me to wear it.

So, I no longer wear lingerie for him. I wear it for me. It helps me to feel sexy, and if I don’t feel sexy, then I’m thinking just one thing when my husband and I get down to business, “Can we get this over with already?” When I feel sexy, on the other hand, I’m thinking something more along the lines of, “Oh, yes, slow down. Right there. Oh, make it last.”

But, sexy at almost 40 isn’t as easy as sexy at almost 30. I’ve got issues with my aging body, particularly with my abdomen, and not for the reasons you might suspect. I’m fit and slender. My belly is almost pancake flat, but I have a few bulging pockets of gunk—they have some sort of medical term that I no longer remember—that look like humongous mosquito bites. I don’t like them. I don’t think they are sexy. If I had the time, inclination, and money, I’d probably have them surgically removed. My husband? I doubt he knows they exist. Doesn’t matter. It’s about me feeling sexy, and I don’t feel sexy when I’m broadcasting my big mosquito bite looking bumps to the rest of my bedroom. No sexy? No sex.

Now, the hated garters and thongs are still history. There’s no love lost there, but I do wear and love waist cinchers. They cover up my bumps, and they make me look like Heidi Klum (a middle aged woman can dream). I pair them with some sort of non-thong, non-wedgie producing, non-pinching lacy panties. When I put on one of these get ups—sometimes along with a pair of long black boots—I morph into sexy mom. I feel hotter than hot. The act of getting dolled up takes about three to five minutes, but it counts as at least 10 minutes of foreplay. I put on the stuff, I look in the mirror, and I think, “Where are you man? Get in my bed now! No need to shower. Just get naked already.”

Now, at my age, finding the right lingerie can be a frustrating experience, especially because I don’t often have the luxury of shopping in one of those expensive boutique shops where the nice sales lady waits on you hand and foot and periodically tells you how beautiful you are. Out here in the suburbs, the only lingerie shopping location is Victoria’s Secret. I have nothing against their line up of items, but their sales help is usually half my age, half my weight, and double my bra size. These girls wouldn’t know a stretch mark or bulge of cellulite if it were broadcast to them as a text message with a link to a YouTube video depicting these very things. I once told one of these youngsters, for instance, “I want some sexy panties that are also comfortable. In other words, no thongs.” I rendered her speechless. Sexy and comfortable were not words she knew how to string together in the same sentence.

So I put nearly every medium pair of panties they sold at the store (minus the thongs) in my shopping bag and I went to the fitting area and tried them all on. After doing about 100 deep knee bends, leg lifts, and hamstring stretches, I eventually found a beyond sexy pair that stayed put when I walked.

Now, if you are following along and thinking to yourself, “Hot damn, I need to go out and buy myself some lingerie,” I have a few words of advice.

Tip #1: Go shopping on one of those long rainy days when you have absolutely nothing on your schedule. Be prepared to spend a lot of time in there because 99 percent of what you will take into the dressing room will be too small, too big or too wrong (wrong color, wrong cut, wrong material, just wrong).

Tip #2: Blame the bad fit on the clothing designers, and not on your body. Most of the stuff at the store is designed for 16 year olds with round inhuman boobs. What woman’s boobs are as round at the top as they are at the bottom? That’s what I really want to know. Again, I have just two words for the type of woman these bra designers have in mind: Silicone Girl. It seems as if every lingerie bra is made for her. To find the one sexy bra designed for the rest of us—approaching round on the bottom, flat as a deflated balloon on the top–you’ll be in there quite a while. This isn’t your body’s fault. Your body is perfect and beautiful. It’s the fault of the idiotic clothing designer who doesn’t know a real woman’s boobs from a Barbie doll’s.

Tip #3: How do you know if an outfit is just right? Use your sexual instincts and body feedback as your guide. Walk around the dressing room. Bend forward. Do a squat or two. Mimic a few sexual positions. No wedgie? No chafing? No bunched up material? The outfit is still in one piece (the buttons or closures didn’t pop off and the material didn’t rip)? Then you’ve passed the first test. The second test involves the mirror. Look at yourself. Do you see Heidi Klum looking back? (Use your imagination here). If so, buy it. If not, ditch it.

Tip #4: Get in shape before you shop. If you are trying on waist cinchers and teddies, be prepared to stretch, contort, and hook and unhook and hook some more. The hooking and unhooking will require the steady hand of a brain surgeon coupled with the patience of Gandhi. Bring a sandwich. Count it as the day’s workout. But do stay there until you find at least one complete outfit. You’ll be glad you did.

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Tags: body image, lingerie, marriage, sex

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 25th, 2008 at 4:33 pm and is filed under Random Musings. 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.