Fairly warned be thee say I

Most things that look, feel or taste good have a price. Eating the greasiest, fattiest, most delicious kind of food makes you fat; drinking booze gives you a hangover and watching 7th Heaven makes you feel very, very dirty.

But one thing I did not necessarily expect to come with a price is suspender stockings.

The things is: I love stockings. I love them black, nude, fishnetted and patterned. I love the freakish chill of office air conditioning that lets me wear them to work most days and, if the weather permitted, I would wear them every day.

But I hate the way that normal stockings either have to be pulled up to my armpits or be allowed to pool awkwardly around my waist. And the hipster stocking route tends to result in a muffin top large enough to feed a starving African nation. Neither is ideal.

So I figure there must be a better way.

And it was this kind of thinking that led me to suspender stockings. Firstly, they stay the hell away from my waist and, secondly, they make me feel like a 1950s floozy. Check and check – what could go wrong?

Well why exactly I chose a funeral to road test them I can’t say but here’s the thing: if the undies those suckers are attached to aren’t actually tight enough to cut off your circulation they can and will be pulled down to your ankles. Seriously.

Between me and my blog readership of, you know, three, in the normal course of events I can get away with wearing undies that have seen better days. Undies that have lost all claim to elasticity even. And, so far as I know, nobody is any the wiser.

But attach some stockings to said undies, start walking and… suddenly the goodwill that has presumably been holding them up for years disappears. All of a sudden those undies have the bit between their teeth and they are heading for the ground.

So there I was at the cemetery when I felt a certain, shall we say, lack of undergarment support… and the unmistakable sensation of worn elastic slowly giving into gravity. Nice visual, right? And there’s nowhere I can go because I’m walking behind the freaking hearse by this point. So I have to rest my hand not-at-all-casually on my side, desperately clinging onto a handful of cotton (and my dignity), wondering what I can possibly do if they fall down all the way.

There is no nice way to lose your underwear in the course of the funeral. You cannot step over them and keep going. You cannot pick them up and keep going. You can run away and leave the country but getting into the witness protection program can be an expensive business these days.

So at this point things are looking pretty bad for me.

And then we got to the crematorium or the chapel or whatever it’s called and things started looking up. Not because I got to sit down (I didn’t) but because, even if my undies had fallen down, tripped me up and propelled me into the casket I would still have been able to walk away with more class than the girl next to me.

There’s nothing wrong with being a pregnant 18-year-old (well, you know, there kind of is but I’m not here to judge so… whatever). There’s also nothing wrong with being a pregnant 18-year-old with a 2-year-old daughter already under your belt. And, if that was nicotine gum that she was chewing through the entire freaking ceremony, then I’ll let that one slide too because kudos to her for looking out for the baby-to-be. And now that we’re throwing caution to the wind why shouldn’t an 18-year-old former smoker pregnant mother wear a dress to a funeral?

Show of that baby bump, flash your pins – whatever.

But problems begin when that dress is faux-denim, tie-dyed and skintight. Problem continue when the dress is also slashed high enough on the thigh that horrified spectators can practically see Baby Number Two crowning when pregnant 18-year-old mother sits down.

Sure she’s chock-full of pregnancy hormones telling her that tie-dye’s due for a comeback but that excuse can only go so far. Somebody in this girl’s life needs to step in and tell her what is and is not acceptable funeral wear. Or at least introduce her to the concept of pants.

So: yes this is a warning against the dangers of suspender stockings. They are not the innocent piece of legwear they pretend to be. But, more importantly, this is a reassuring reminder that, however bad our fashion faux pas may be, we are capable of carrying most of them off with dignity and class… so long as there is a teenage slapper nearby to make us look good by comparison.