Gone Fishing

Last week I rolled on a pair of squiggly black fishnets, and all day and evening garnered compliments from T, male coworkers, and strangers alike. I was reminded how much men love fishnet stockings.

A quick trip to Google provides a few presumptions about why this is true, most of them based on associations with wanton women. Yet, they are also the stocking choice of high school dancelines and roller derby queens. What do they represent to our collective psyche?

Fishnets benefit all legs with their ability to provide illusions in all the right places. They accent the curve of a calf or thigh, while minimizing cankles and lifting droopy knees. They shadow and shape, adding an aura of mystery to the wearer.

But, let's delve deeper into fishnet psychology. I am too far removed from my college women's studies classes to get involved in the politics of sexuality, but (speaking only from the surface of this topic) whether hooker or high schooler, women who wear fishnets represent a physical independence while still "entertaining" a supposedly male audience. Yet fishnets themselves confine and capture. Kind of makes the head swirl with symbolic possibilities. I see a provocative graduate thesis in the works for someone out there.

Meanwhile, I'm still kind of stuck on mystery and romance. I'd never allow my man to witness the hideous site of my attempts to yank and wedge myself into a pair of Spanx, yet there is sometime sensual about the point of a toe and the drape of feminine flesh as we slowly wrap our skin in netting, like the opposite of moulting. Add a pair of heels and *gasp* a seam up the back of our legs and we pronounce, "I am independent and sexy. And you can catch me if you have the right lure."