Mucho reader comment on my lament yesterday at the passing of the stocking. A stunning number of readers don’t know what a stocking IS, and asked to be enlightened. I refer these readers to a well-known remark of Talleyrand’s. To my comment that “those of us who came to adulthood in the suspender-belt era B.T. (i.e. before tights) cherish many, many happy memories,” one lady spoke, I suspect, for many of her–my–generation:

I’m JUST old enough to have worn one–garter belts here, by the way–and all I’m going to say is only someone who never, ever, ever wore one could possibly wax nostalgic about the hideous things. Happy memories, NOT. Horrible semi-permanent indentations in the flesh, the beastly things suddenly snapping so that you had to back out of the room and dig into your emergency supply of safety pins to reattach the clasp–I’m all for pleasing the male half of the species if it simply means doing straightforward things like bearing children and preparing reasonably tasty dinners, but some sacrifices are just too much to ask…

How much appeal this argument has to a younger generation who cheerfully insert brass rings through sensitive body parts, cover themselves with tattoos, and permit quack doctors to inject their faces with “one of the most poisonous naturally occurring substances in the world,” I leave to your judgment.