It's Complicated

I have a complicated love/hate relationship with lingerie. 

At my age, finding the right lingerie can be a frustrating experience, especially because I don’t often have the luxury of shopping in one of those expensive boutique shops where the nice sales lady waits on you hand and foot and periodically tells you how beautiful you are. My only lingerie shopping locations are La Senza or la Vie en Rose. I have nothing against their line up of items, but their sales help is usually half my age, half my weight, and double my bra size. These girls wouldn’t know a stretch mark or bulge of cellulite if it were broadcast to them as a text message with a link to a YouTube video depicting these very things. I once told one of these youngsters, for instance, “I want some sexy panties that are also comfortable. In other words, no thongs.” I rendered her speechless. Sexy and comfortable were not words she knew how to string together in the same sentence. 

I've been on the hunt for some new comfortable, sexy panties and lingerie for a while now so the other day, I trekked to the mall and waltzed my way into La Senza like I knew what I was doing. I put nearly every pair of panties in my size that they sold at the store (minus the thongs) in my shopping bag and I went to the fitting area and tried them all on. After doing about 100 deep knee bends, leg lifts, and hamstring stretches, I eventually found a beyond sexy pair that stayed put when I walked.

Now, if you are following along and thinking to yourself, “Hot damn, I need to go out and buy myself some lingerie,” I have a few words of advice...

• Go shopping on one of those long rainy days when you have absolutely nothing on your schedule. Be prepared to spend a lot of time in there because 99 percent of what you will take into the dressing room will be too small, too big or too wrong. Wrong color, wrong cut, wrong material...just wrong.

• Blame the bad fit on the clothing designers, and not on your body. Most of the stuff at the store is designed for 18 year olds with round inhuman boobs. What woman’s boobs are as round at the top as they are at the bottom? That’s what I really want to know. Again, I have just two words for the type of woman these bra designers have in mind: Silicone Girl. It seems as if every lingerie bra is made for her. You could spend days in there and never find the right bra...this isn't your body’s fault. Your body is perfect and beautiful. It’s the fault of the idiotic clothing designer who doesn't know a real woman’s boobs from a Barbie doll’s.

• How do you know if an outfit is just right? Use your sexual instincts and body feedback as your guide. Walk around the dressing room. Bend forward. Do a squat or two. No wedgie? No chafing? No bunched up material? The outfit is still in one piece. The buttons or closures didn't pop off and the material didn’t rip? Then you've passed the first test. The second test involves the mirror. Look at yourself. Do you see Miranda Kerr looking back? (Use your imagination here). If so, buy it. If not, ditch it.

• Get in shape before you shop. If you are trying on corsets and teddies, be prepared to stretch, contort, and hook and unhook and hook some more. The hooking and unhooking will require the steady hand of a brain surgeon coupled with the patience of Gandhi. Bring a sandwich. Count it as the day’s workout. But do stay there until you find at least one complete outfit. You’ll be glad you did.

What about you...do you enjoy shopping for lingerie?