Well, it's nice to know that pantyhose are uncomfortable for tall women too. For a short woman like me, they tend to wrinkle in odd places so that it feels like they're trying to slide off all the time.

But I agree that pantyhose should not be standard. I haven't worn any since I was a teenager and my stepmom forced me to - and the only thing I do to my legs is shave about once every week and a half, too.

The weird thing to me about them is that we're not expected to wear them with shorts but we are with skirts, even though our legs are just as "exposed" both ways. But I guess if Michelle wore shorts, people would be even more horrified because shorts are supposedly (according to many, many fashion magazines and blogs that I've seen) the least classy item of clothing you can wear.

While I couldn't find the blog entry, the crux of your excerpt is not the problematic "natural", but how she calls out "medicalized beauty culture". That's right on target -- 'imperfection', even something normal like cellulite, is pathologized, self-esteem suffers, expensive and dubious treatments are developed and marketed like legit medication...

Maybe we could interpret this as a call to put down our Epiladies, pocket the hundreds of dollars we were going to spend on skin treatments, and ignore the people who don't get out their mom's basement enough to appreciate what real women look like.

Crap. I wore a skirt yesterday and I forgot to wax, exfoliate, use firming cream and anti-cellulite and stretch-mark treatments, get a pedicure or a spray-on-tan before doing so. I just left the house all willy-nilly without a care in the world exposing my bare legs to the public. The horror!

Oh well, next time I'll get it right.

/snark

I found the original post very odd. So she argues that we live in a medicalized beauty culture - which could become the basis for an interesting critique on how something as simple as bare legs is accompanied by all these expectations for perfection - and then just goes along with it by saying "well, since it's too much work to live up to all those standards just hide that part of your body by using pantyhose!" What? She's buying into our beauty culture! And then she even says "oh and those expectations ALSO APPLY to women of color". Of course they do! The beauty industry long ago expanded beyond white woman - she's almost got that hint of "well golly, I thought black women could get away with anything because no one really finds them attractive and we basically equate them with slaves, but shockingly they're physical attractiveness is considered as important as white ladies".

I only wear hose/tights in the winter because it's cold, and I like wearing skirts too much to give it up 6 months out of the year, but when I do go bare-legged I don't do anything other than shave. That's it. I don't usually even polish my toenails because I'm too messy to do it myself and I don't want to spend the money to get them professionally done. And no one cares!

I'm glad Double XX is apparently proud of not being a feminist site because if they were, they'd be doing it totally wrong.

"and if you're tall (like me & Ms. Obama) they usually make your crotch about a foot long."

Ahaha. This plus the ridiculous waist thats usually attached to them is the exact reason I do not wear pantyhose. My mom doesn't wear them either. She is also tall but fits in to the tall build that most clothing makers seem to think every single tall broad fits. I'm 6' tall with 36" legs and I'm all of about 140lbs. No one makes CLOTHES that fit me let alone pantyhose.

I have a spider vein despite only being 21 years old. I've had cellulite since I was 17. I'm extremely physically active and have wonderful PALE legs. I'll be damned if I'm going to put some goofy meshy crap on that doesn't even match my skintone. Plus, it makes my butt sweat.

Hell, the only reason I shave is because body hair makes me itch like the dickens.

Not surprising from this publication, but the writer's claims make no sense. First of all, I've never heard a woman say that pantyhose eliminated the perceived need for leg-shaving. Hello? Hair generally shows through the hose. Duh.

Pedicures are, obviously, for one's feet, and unless you are wearing sandals, your feet won't show much anyway (and I was always led to believe that hose with sandals = no-no--who wants to see reinforced pantyhose toes?)

And the skin treatments she mentions are a) something most women wouldn't waste money on or even think of and b)kind of irrelevant for the kinds of clothes we are talking about--not that no one has extreme cellulite on her calves, but it does tend to be concentrated above the knee in most people. I seriously doubt Michelle's gonna be putting weird anti-fat creams on her ankles.

Plus I was under the impression that that shit didn't exactly work. I'd be pretty surprised to hear that Michelle Obama was getting spray tans, too, "women of color blah blah blah" aside. Plus, if pantyhose doesn't match your skin tone, then what is the point of it? And if you don't exfoliate (or depilitate), then the pantyhose will itch even more than it absolutely must. But even if I "had to" do those things in order to get away with not wearing pantyhose, I would still do them, because that is how much pantyhose sucks.

I'm imagining a similar article about the burqa: "you say they're unnatural, but just look at how women who don't wear them have to wash the crusties out of their eyes and maybe wear makeup!!" Yeah, whatevs.

I love this post! :)

I HATE panythose. But I will say, in its defense, I grew up in the northeast and it was COLD from like October to May... I appreciated pantyhose when I had to go out in a skirt! ;) (it's also really great to layer under jeans ect if you have to work outside in the snow in cold climates...)

I don't see the point of it when it's warm out. Or to make your legs a darker color...I'm sooo pale, you KNOW it's fake lol.

I also shave because the leg hair itches. And I like the nice silky smooth feeling :)

Aside from all the good points already made about the incoherence of the article's stance, I just want to say, from a man's perspective, I don't even "get" pantyhose in general. When I was old enough to figure out that women who wore them were supposedly doing so to be more attractive to men, I promptly spent another few years trying to suss out why they would think that was a good idea. They look kinda... strange. I've only ever dated for any length of time one woman who regularly wore them with skirts/dresses - the rest all went natural, which I loved. What sadist thought these things up, anyway? And why is it that our culture spends so much energy trying to make women look like ANYTHING but what they ACTUALLY look like in an effort to make them "beautiful"?

Maybe it's just because I'm a traitor to my gender or something like that, but no one ever CC'd me on the memo that explains that.

I didn't even know people wore panty hose anymore.

And what's wrong about shaving and putting on lotion? Or sitting by the pool for a 'tan' as long as you're not over doing it?

I put on lotion everday and shave. Because if not, my legs itch like a mother and it's uncomfortable. And I put on lotion, because it makes my legs softer and my knees are really dry and it's uncomfortable.

It's not a crime to want to look good. I want to be the best person I can be, inside and out. And as long as I'm not hurting myself to do that, it doesn't make me any less of a strong woman.

And if or if not that involves panty hose is no body's business.