Thursday, June 30, 2011

Does this dress make me look fat?

“Doing anything special this weekend?” I asked a hairdresser at the beauty salon this morning.

She told me she was part of a woman’s Civil War re-enactment group, and they were meeting for the first time this year.


Eager to learn more I pressed for details, thinking I’d hear about the battles and hardship of the era.

But it turned out that after a long year of over-eating and minimal exercising, the women in the group had one common concern – could they still fit into those voluminous dresses with the tiny waists?


I had to laugh – with all that was going on back in the 19th century I'll bet none of those ladies would have wondered if their dresses made them look fat. If a woman WAS worried about her mid-section, there was always that trusty corset!

When I left the salon I told the hairdresser to take care and be safe on the battlefield
. She told me not to worry – the only weapons the ladies were allowed to wield were brooms and spatulas.


Oh, my…
Chris
Lighthearted Press

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Christine--they certainly did, and I heard from our re-enactors that in the day it was a blessing to be pregnant because you could take the darned thing off! Imagine that!

Chris Davis said...

Bernadette, do you mean that after churning butter, baking bread, sewing clothes and taking care of the farm, children and animals, women STILL had to worry about how thin they were? Wow - who knew!