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Why Bluegum
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I was born in Melbourne during the depression, of parents desperately concerned with their social standing. My father was away during the war, and my mother moved to a small country village, 'for safety'. She had few friends in the district, and we had virtually no social life, so I was seriously lacking in social skills. I went to the local state and high schools, but did not fit in well, as I had read widely, was expected to go to University, was bright and had an insatiable curiosity, whereas the parents of most of the other children were shopkeepers and farmers, who expected their children to leave school at the minimum age to help them.
I was lonely and shy, and when I reached puberty I became very interested in the girls, but lacked the social skills to be at ease with them. One day we were in the classroom at morning break, when one of the girls came in and threw a tantrum. Their school uniform was tunic, short white socks and sensible black shoes, but she had worn nylons to school that morning. However no one had noticed, so she had taken them off again, and complained bitterly that we were an insensitive and unobservant lot of pigs. Nothing her friends said would persuade her to put them on again for us to admire.
I was amazed that anyone could get so worked up about such an apparently trivial item, and wondered what was so special about nylons. Once I started thinking about them I soon asked myself how they were held up, and so I began to think about the girdles which most women used to hold them up, and the corsets of yesteryear. I had a strong masochistic streak, and wanted to know what it would be like to wear such apparently uncomfortable garments. So I set out to find out all I could about them, and I soon became obsessed with the whole subject.
Eventually I married, and my wife wore girdles to please me, but without enthusiasm, and she could not understand my interest in the subject. Meanwhile I continued to be fascinated by them, and particularly by the question of what it was like to wear one. There was only one way to answer this, and eventually I worked up courage to buy a girdle from a sale at one of the city stores. I could never have asked to try it on, and would probably have been received very coldly if I had, but eventually I determined my size, and tried a wide range of garments.
They were at best uncomfortable, and I began to feel very guilty about persuading my wife to wear them. So when she replaced them with light weight control briefs I considered myself lucky that she was still prepared to wear these. But I continued my search for the perfect girdle, and eventually found some I could wear with reasonable comfort.
Various things I had read had hinted that I was not alone in my interests, but I had never been able to discuss the subject with anyone else. But in 1996 I discovered the Internet, and the newsgroup Alt.Clothing.Lingerie. It was a revelation. Here were a group of men and women openly discussing girdles with candour, enthusiasm, humour and style. We had a wonderful year, with many fascinating discussions and marvellous friendships.
But, alas, it was too good to last. Inevitably the blowflies arrived, intent on spoiling the picnic for everyone, and the swarms of losers who could think of nothing more intelligent to say than "Gimme a f…". These drove away many of the women, and the rest departed when the commercial sex spammers started flooding the group with the crudest possible advertisements.
So this site is dedicated to the memory of Suzanne, Susan B., Virginian, Marcia, Helene, Peaches and all the others who made ACL such a wonderful group.
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