The Humble Slip

When I was young, women and girls wore slips under their dresses and skirts.  Here is a fine example.  The half-slip was also popular and quite acceptable.

They were never supposed to show, but we all knew they were there.  In fact, we had a code...if we saw a girl at school whose slip was showing below the hem of her dress, we would tell her, "It's snowing down south."  She would immediately head for the girls' bathroom and adjust the garment so it was out of sight.

We were trained from an early age that this extra layer was necessary.

Even our dolls had them. 

They served as modesty protectors, in case one were to find oneself backlit, like Diana Spencer, in this photo that was taken before she became a Princess:

They also prevent this:  one's skirt getting caught between one's legs while walking.

I wear one, to this day.  I live in a hot climate, where the slip was probably abandoned quite early, but I have always maintained that, if something is going to get stuck to my butt when I stand up after sitting while sweaty, it is not going to be my skirt, like this unfortunate lady:

People I costume sometimes think I'm really odd, because I insist on slips, if the play is set in a time period when most women wore them, and if their character is one of those women.  The actresses think that, because the audience can't see the slip, it doesn't matter.  I beg to differ.  without the slip, the skirt will cling where it shouldn't, ride up where it shouldn't and just generally not hang correctly.

I saw a really good play yesterday, and I was asked what I thought of the costumes.  The worst thing I noticed was that the lead actress was not wearing a slip, and the play was set in the 1940s.  Considering some of the costuming I've seen on stage, that's pretty minor, but still. 

It's attention to details that separates the sheep from the goats, IMO.

Ten Years Older Than God

Damn, I'm old...

Sometimes I feel even older, because my parents were old enough to be my grandparents, and their stories go back farther than most.

These days, when people talk about The Good Old Days, they are usually referring to the mid 20th Century.  My parents were born in the first decade of the 20th Century.  Both remembered the First World War, were adults during the Great Depression and just when they thought things had settled down, along came WWII, and the shit hit the fan all over again.  Dad enlisted in the RAF (though in peace time, he would have been too old).

They came from very different backgrounds.  Dad's family were middle class merchants, having a wines and spirits importing business, complete with what Hyacinth Bucket referred to as "a Royal Warrant," which was A Thing in Edwardian Britain.  During the Depression, the company went bust, but before that, they were classy enough that my grandfather got to marry the daughter of County society.  My Granny and her two sisters were known as "the Three Belles of Brecon."  Mom, on the other hand, was raised in America, born to a family that was never well-off.  Her mother died when she was 9, and she and her three siblings were shunted around from grandparents to aunts, because their father was a timberman, and spent a lot of his time in logging camps.

A story my Granny used to tell involved herself as a child, attending a party in an elegant house.  Granny loved raisins and currants, and had picked them all out of her cake to enjoy after the cake-y part.  The butler, thinking she was finished with her dessert, whisked away her plate, dried fruit and all.  She used it as a lesson...take what life brings and enjoy it, because if you save the best for last it might not be there when you are.  I always thought, "Who has a butler serving a kids' party?"  This is the same Granny who, when Dad took Mom home to England, made excuses for her by saying, "My daughter-in-law is an American, you know..." as if that covered a multitude of social indiscretions.

Mom told stories of being six and enduring cold baths, because it was supposed to toughen children up to force them to undergo such physical shocks...and being sewn into her wool "union suit" in October and having to wear it till May, no matter the weather.  A warm autumn or spring was never taken into account.  In spite of cold baths the rest of the year, nobody bathed at all (except for sponge baths) over the winter.  She started life in upstate New York and then lived in Ottawa, Ontario until her majority.

Neither had graduated from high school--Dad's education was cut short due to lack of funds, and the alternative presented to him by his father (the army) was not something that interested him.  He Ran Away to Canada, and did not return to England until after his father died.  Mom failed math, so couldn't graduate in Canada, foiling Aunt Ethel's plan for her to teach.  She went into nursing instead (the requirements were apparently much less strict in the mid 1920s than they are today), and did that until she married my dad.  Like most careers for women in those days, nursing was for single women only.  Dad had got a job in Vancouver, working for his cousin's firm, Courtauld's, where he stayed through several location transfers (Vancouver, BC to Cornwall, Ont, to Coventry, England) until 1957.

So the stories I grew up hearing span an extra generation.  From a time when not having to share a bed was a luxury for a child, let alone having one's own room.  From a time when one had a family crest engraved on one's flatware.  One's sterling flatware, mind you; not (shudder) plate.

It's no wonder I'm a little weird...