The Naked Truth

The Naked Truth
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published Saturday May 25, 2013

My days as a nudist are numbered. Last week, in the mad rush to get my brood to school on time, I streaked past my husband on the way to the laundry to collect some knickers from the drier. Normally I’d have covered up with a towel, but I was feeling frisky, so I thought I’d give him an eyeful and set him up for his day at the office.

He was sitting on a kitchen stool eating Weetbix, absorbed in the newspaper. He glanced up as I sashayed past. I remembered the deportment coach from school telling us that a woman’s derriere is mesmerising to a man. I now get what she was on about – all that roundness and pertness, the curve of the waist giving way to the swell of the hips. So I floated by the kitchen bench on tiptoes knowing this would make my width taller and my cheeks cheekier. With a toss of my head, I shot him a wink over my shoulder.

He frowned at me and grunted: “Charming!” (This from a man with a milk moustache on his top lip.)

Deflated, I dressed as a hessian sack and slouched with the kids to school. Pushing my pram-borne 3-year-old home through the park, I deliberated: Is 45 too old to be getting around in the nick? Surely a naked wife at breakfast is more titillating than the finance pages? And if I’m now too dilapidated for household displays of nakedness, then maybe I’m too old for public displays of leopard print? Or leather? Was it time for my mid-life crisis?

In pursuit of enlightenment, I detoured to the shops. While small daughter dived into an icecream, I propped on a bench and sat back to appreciate middle-aged women dressing their age.

Women land in frock shops like homing pigeons. They coo to each other over the new season’s black and white, strutting with happiness to be in familiar territory. But the first squall of winter had willowy shop girls dressing their windows with Native American flavours – Cherokee-print cardigans, woolly and oversized and flattering only to long-legged teenagers called Pocahontas. If chunky cable knits are “in” (borrowed by the fashionable set from their boyfriends’ wardrobes), how will I look like in husband’s stick-brown number with elbow patches and a shawl collar? Five kilos heavier is my guess.

But there they were queuing up for the change-rooms, champion birds in their late 40’s, flushed from the gym and trying on those dangly cardigans with  jeans so tight I winced.  

Then gliding towards me came a 60-something fashionista. She was vacuum-packed into black leather skirt with studs down the seams and a plunging silk blouse that exposed a valley of leathery cleavage. Two teenagers did a double take and smirked. As she passed by, I noticed that she had the golden tan of the well-rested and gnarled toes from several decades of pointy shoes.

It takes supreme confidence to pull off a look that has other women mouthing “Mutton!” behind your back. But she walked with the aristocratic air of a dame who has (married) money. I admired her for the audacity of her fashion hope.

I’ve no such daring. I won’t risk short skirts for fear of drawing attention to my callused knees. That also rules out hot-pants and dresses slit to the thigh like Sonia McMahon’s. But skinny trousers make my legs look like strangled sausages, so they’re out too. What’s left? Aprons, overalls and peasant skirts. “Peasant” is one thing, but I don’t want to be mistaken for some wench harvesting a field of potatoes.

Up top, I have more problems. Middle-age spread is migrating from my dinner plate to my upper arms. My chest requires a pair of hammocks rigged with hawsers and struts, and the remains of my washboard stomach need to be disciplined with industrial underwear.

Then there’s middle-aged cleavage: too much is cheap, but I’m not ready for a wardrobe full of turtle necks. And don’t get me started on my neck, I’m praying middle-age doesn’t adorn me with a pouch like a pelican.

I no longer understand the fashion pages in Vogue, but the Women’s Weekly insists on dividing women into fruit shapes –  we’re either top-heavy apples  or bottom-heavy pears. I am an apple, but I’m only one Devonshire tea away from a pear.

Why aren’t men subjected to this fashion drivel? Men are either short, or tall. Fit, fat or thin. Or average. Average is a compliment. An average woman isn’t trying hard enough.

So we left the mall, my oval-shaped daughter and I, and mooched home. And that evening, I looked up the latest winter trends and discovered I should be wearing a metallic bomber jacket, a snakeskin print scarf and Frankie pants, which look like the world’s tightest tracky-daks . On a 45-year-old mother-of-three, that’s the kind of ensemble that gets muffled snorts at Coles. Until I find out who Frankie is, and whether she’s an apple or a pear, I’m sticking with my peasant skirt.