"You Can Wear Them As A Girdle"

This morning has been a pretty typical lazy Sunday in our household. While most other SV families are out hiking, bike riding, and keeping their bodies looking California trim-- we are loafing around.Dear husband is making waffles, kids are doing what kids do, play and fight, and I am enjoying my coffee with the NY Times. Nirvana. No, not Kurt Cobain, true suburban bliss. I feel like a Norman Rockwell painting, and all warm and fuzzy inside...until I bring up a controversial topic : I want to buy leggings.

Pictured on the back page of the Sunday Styles , in a Gap ad is a model in quite a get up. Actually, its an outfit that I believe that I owned in high school. ( Graduated in 1985--just like that Bowling for Soup song. ) Short denim mini, denim cropped vest, little black boots, and black leggings. Now I would never attempt a mini skirt. And I am opposed to denim on denim.But I am intrigued by the leggings.

I have seen leggings splashed all over the fashion magazines. Saks in NYC had an entire legging area.Nordstrom has leggings  for all ages, and at all prices. (Norma Kamali, famous in the eighties has designed some leggings this season. ) Leggings are great for my daughter. Her undies will not show when she does flips in a dress on the monkey bars. They do serve a utilitarian purpose, coverage.But I will not be hanging from any monkey bars in the near future. I suppose they could be helpful when my four year old hides under my skirt,or if I am sitting on the floor during his circle time in a skirt. (No need for his playmates to see my cotton Mom panties. )

But I want to be fashionable. I do not want to look my age--if you could see all the anti-aging creams in my drawer you'd know that. (I am allergic to most, and break out from the others. ) I have been stuck in a sort of mid life clothing crisis. Anthropolgie seems like just the solution for Mom's like me...I want to look young and hip, but I am neither young, nor hip. ( I do have lots of hip though.)On a recent trip to the Lucky Store, I asked the sales girl if I was too old for the shirt I had chosen. She informed me that Lucky was just for women my age, so I could dress like my daughter. (Yikes.) I bought the trendy top. It is cute, and covers my tummy bulge. Now that's a fashion trend that can be helpful. These long tops, worn the right way can offer some great coverage. However, if they are too big--one may look like they are in a maternity blouse.

So, do I buy leggings ? I could wear them under a dress. They are perfect for that layered look. But my thighs are much larger than they were in 1985. I fear that my tummy bulge may not look to pretty under that elastic waistband. Will I suddenly  start singing Madonna songs, and wearing black bracelets...Oh, the conflict of trying to make your post four baby, almost forty body fit into the latest trend. My husband suggests that I could wear leggings as a girdle. Ugh, have you ever worn Spanx tummy control-- torture. Maybe I will just stick to my low rise jeans that let my tummy hang proudly over the top, and my gauchos that make my short legs look even stubbier.(Such a fashion don't.) What's a girl to do? Being a slave to fashion has its price. Consensus in my home is that  Mom should not be seen in leggings. After I try them on, I bet that I will agree. I could always go buy a flasdance sweatshirt, put on a head band and dance like a maniac...or I could act my age. Never.