The scene was a dressing room at an up-market department store; the dramatis personae were two slim, middle-aged women. Despite the frivolity of the circumstances and the apparent lightness of their tones of voice, the subject of conversation was clearly controversial. An eavesdropper at the changing room door heard this exchange: “Of course it’s not too short. It looks fantastic!”
“Ew, my knees are so knobby!”
“Nonsense. You have great legs.”
“After forty, it’s not a good idea to show your knees.”
“What are you, Islamic? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not! Frenchwomen cover their knees.”
“Au contraire, they wear the shortest skirts of all –”
So it went on, with the two shoppers bickering behind the closed door as a saleswoman waited outside, wanly hopeful.
Thus is one of the great debates of feminine midlife carried out, and not just in that one dressing room, either. The shortness of one’s skirts may seem a frivolous issue, but for women over 35, it matters.
How could it not? The country is full of overexposed sexpots whose too-youthful attire fails to match the antiquity of their faces; that’s one extreme. The other extreme, equally dire, is the sexless frumpiness favored by certain female bureaucrats and jurists.
Most women hope to move from their 20s into their 70s without drifting too far toward either end of the ridicule spectrum. But determining where exactly one ought to stand, so to speak, vis-a-vis one’s legs, is not easy. Cover the knees after 40? After 45? Never? Always?
“It’s a paradox,” says a shapely friend in her mid-50s. “The legs are the last to go, so it’s tempting to show them off. On the other hand, there is the mutton dressed as lamb terror.”
“Legs are the last thing you should cover!” demurs an athlete who is well into her fourth decade. “Isn’t 40 the new 20, anyway?”
A fashion-conscious friend of the same vintage agrees: “If one is slim and still has presentable legs, I say why not?”
One devastating answer to that question comes from a co-ed in her late teens: “Thin women should definitely cover their knees. No one wants to see scary chicken legs.”
Harsh! Yet it’s the same view — if less cruelly expressed — put forth by style guru Genevieve Antoine Dariaux. In her chic little book, “A Guide to Elegance,” the French couturier spoke decisively on the subject: “KNEES: The proverb Pour vivre heureux, vivons caches” — to stay happy, stay hidden — “was invented for them!”
It is true that Mme. Dariaux made her pronouncement in 1964, when the book first came out, but does that make it wrong? Apparently, if only based on that dressing room fracas, the dispute remains stubbornly unsettled to this day.
Meghan Cox Gurdon’s column appears on Sunday and Thursday. She can be contacted at mailto:[email protected] “>[email protected].
