To Buy or Not to Buy

When I retired, I had no more excuses to use expressions like coffee breaks, lunch breaks, sick days or holidays off. My life has become one big break and routines went out the window.

I do maintain certain pre-dinner breaks where i can indulge in tiny snacks while watching the ladies on QVC and HSN (America’s sales playgrounds) launch into their pitch for products to make you feel at least 15 years younger. They are perfectly groomed with every strand of hair tweaked to perfection, faces devoid of blemishes and fingernails anointed to withstand damaging workload. They all discuss their homes, kids, supermarket trips and, naturally, life-enhancing tips for the products they are promoting. How do they manage all these tasks and still be in the throes of a working mom regime?

Accompanying their spiel there is usually the designer or rep of the product on display too, injecting his or her intimate personal knowledge. For instance, a cashmere/cotton sweater will be analyzed and prodded to show the ultra-superior quality and I can almost feel the garment in my hands. So soft, pliable and I want to say, “Stop, let me try it on.” I’m as ecstatic as the presenter, especially when it’s almost sold out. I have to tear myself away from the lure of the buy to check on my stewing chicken thighs infused with my invented sauce during the last selling break.

I have great admiration for these sales ladies. None are overly young or very glamorous-looking, but they all dress alike from the waist to their ankles. Above the waist they wear gorgeous tops, jackets, stoles, jewelry galore. Their footwear is spectacular; high, pencil thin heels, ankle boots, full size boots, glitzy flats and their toenails are pedicured to perfection.

Between the waist and ankles they wear leggings (known as tights in olden times) in colorful shades and stretchy materials that assuredly will make you look svelte and bulgeless.

I own an assortment of leggings/tights, but I don’t like how I look in them. No matter how I twist and turn, pinch, pull and close one eye, it won’t go away (meaning my body). I stare at It and the leggings manage to wrinkle in the wrong spots and I have to keep pulling at the bottoms. In cold weather, what happens to the exposed skin between the end of the legging and footwear? No problem if you are wearing high boots. But if not, what then?

Ballet dancers wear wool leg warmers to keep their muscles flexible, but what do these ladies do to look so tantalizing on the screen?

From my experience, wearing knee-high socks under leggings is not attractive because the seams protrude under the material. Wearing full-length pantyhose may be a problem because skin-tight hose under skin tight leggings can be claustrophobic for the body. I’m sure every woman knows how that feels. If I purchase those glued-to-your-body leggings with a no-bulge promise, do I freeze (no pantyhose), suffocate (pantyhose) or compromise with knee-high seams showing?

Tis a dilemma. I’ll just continue to observe these well-shod ladies in their seamless leggings whirl around the stage and not think about the countless pairs hanging in my closet wasting away from lack of wear.