Oh Me In My Chemise
The group of southern women all stood glaring and assessing one another. Now, before anyone gets the idea that this is something that only southern women would engage in, rest assured that every group of women ever gathered takes the time to eye one another, to size up the competition so to speak, even if there is no sense of competition whatsoever. Women, by nature, can be catty creatures, even when we should be closest to one another. In fact, stress might be the time when we are most evil to our fellow women.
And so, this group of women stood judging and being judgmental with one another, all glaring when they should have been uniting against their common enemy, the daughter of their hostess for the weekend, freshly home from college. A pretty thing when she was growing up, each of these women can recall days when they would see her, her hair in golden pigtails and her knobby, colt like knees covered in bruises and scrapes. She was adorable then, then came puberty.
Some women develop in gangly, awkward steps while others breeze from childhood to young adulthood in glittering, glistening, dewy faced perfection. No acne would dare mar this angelic face, no baby fat hung from her delicate waist or her long limbs. She was like a golden angel and if she was a hateful brat, it might have made her perfect looks even better, but she was not. In fact, she bore the hateful glares and stares of jealous women with cheerful good graces. She came in and bought a gorgeous chemise at the local lingerie store and by the time her car had tooled to the end of the block, the news was that she had bought crotchless panties and had accepted dates with four different men while she was in there.
It is a southern tradition at large gatherings for the participants to take a nap, to get ready for the festivities later in the evening and to hide from the heat of the day. These women are all dressed in their gowns, their teddies and the occasional chemise. They are all lamenting blue veins along their legs and saggy breasts when there is a gentle rapping at the door. What had been a pretty thing just a few years ago was now such a creature of earth shattering beauty that none of the women could bare it. She brought in a stack of fresh linens, smelling for the entire world like heavenly flowers borne upon the perfect summer breeze.
The door had barely closed behind her when the women started the catty comments and the claims. The first, definitely the leader in this little coven announced that the girl’s “perfect” figure was the work of falsies. The second, emboldened by the group dynamic scoffed and said that she had it on good authority that the girl had in fact, had plastic surgery and that they were all jealous over the work of a surgeon and not nature. The third claimed that she knew the girl had earned those fake boobs by dancing. By the end, the girl had graduated to prostitution and had “developed” a serious drug addiction.
The door flew open and the blazing blue eyes of a Botticelli angel stood before them. She was wearing a robe, untied and loose at the waist. One by one she addressed the “ladies and their concerns”. at just the right moment, she tore open the robe and stood proudly in her chemise- revealing that she was not only not surgically altered but that she was not riddled with track marks or any other of the vile things the hags had all claimed. When she was through, she smoothed the fabric of her chemise, closed her robe and then stuck her chin in the air, walking back out without another word.
