Never mind that panty hose; why stockings and tights are rad & fab accomplices in midlife.

Ripped tights are the ultimate rebellion for a midlife woman. There is no panty hose.

Late for a secret rendezvous I rushed into the garden to fetch my dogs. I stumbled, I screamed: I got my silky black stockings snagged by a bush. My hands trembled when sliding into the only other pair I had. The clips of the garter belt slipped off again and again. I couldn’t give up. This was my chance to escape my terribly dysfunctional relationship. I needed the sinful power of these stockings, and their seams to be straight, to convince myself that I wasn’t a woman stuck forever in unhappiness. I was a femme ferocious running off into the summer morning to have the fling of a lifetime. It was the 90s, I hated panty hoses and hadn’t worn stockings for at least a decade.

I made it to the tiny cafe in a remote village where my date had waited for an hour. The weekend changed my life, radically and fabulously and stockings were instilled with the power of an accomplice in fearless adventures.

Yesterday a pair of smooth silk stockings slithered out of their package caressing my skin; my accomplice was back. Three decades later, in midlife.

Should I? What would be my message when I wear them? Sensual stockings, like stilettos, had accumulated a lot of feminist criticism. I asked Google.

A woman’s education consists of two lessons: never leave the house without stocking, never go out without a hat.

Coco Chanel

I failed at that school, Coco would give me an F. It wasn’t just the must of daily elegance for proper women I had avoided for years. The once sensual art of silk stockings had been dragged into the porn mud on one end and watered down into an uniform for well behaved house wives of the 50s. Everyday women were expected to be polished like their silver. The inventions of nylons in the 40s had made them affordable and more than 60 million pairs were sold in the first year. When the production of nylon had to cover second world war needs and stockings became scarce, women felt so incomplete they that they painted a seam onto the back of their legs to fake them. After the war their repressive side shows up in women feeling they had to compete with their man’s pin up girl fantasies, others stepped into the role of Stepford wives. Many were jailed in the belief that a proper woman would not be caught dead…