Evidence for the nylon gene

by Malcolm

This is a reader's contribution, which turned up out of the blue in my e-mail recently. Welcome to Malcolm from 'Down Under' - this site gets more cosmopolitan every day!

Hi, Geraden and other contributors,

Thank you for your thoughtful and intelligent website, by far the best I’ve come across that touches on this potentially vexed and emotionally-charged issue. Man, what a lot of work you’ve done! And you’ve certainly brought considerable intellectual muscle to bear on this matter.

I too, have plenty to say on the subject and related issues that may or may not be relevant or interesting to your members and guests. I have stories to tell and perhaps one or two challenging questions to raise.

For now I’d like to start with the intriguing idea of the nylon gene. I hope you consider some relevance to your site in what follows though I know my tastes are a bit tangential to yours and perhaps the bulk of your members and guests. I do like and wear nylon tights for a lot of the reasons you do, but always opaques of the highest denier available. And what I really go for are the heavyweight winter tights that are based largely on wool and cotton. I only go for the nylons when I need to avoid overheating which is a distinct possibility here in sub-tropical Australia. I don’t really get the sheer, fine fabric thing that seems to interest so many men and I seriously doubt I could ever get into shaving my legs; I find shaving my face enough of a chore and usually appear rather unkempt as a consequence.

My own experience and self-analysis leaves me in no doubt that there is a genetic component to these deep and powerful inclinations. If you like wearing tights, I would say you always will.

I was particularly struck by Ph’s story of his acute disappointment at being disallowed his beloved knitted tights at age five once his mother had decided it was time for more grown-up attire. I know exactly that feeling, but in my case it was experienced even younger. By age three, I was fascinated by the thick, coloured winter tights that girls wore and also their accompanying sweaters and cardigans. (Clearly there’s something at work here about being warm and wrapped and cosy, but also about display because colour and style were, and still are, factors.) In bed, lying on my front, I would imagine myself in the desired tight clothes and would rub myself up and down on the bed. Some kids show signs of being sexual beings very young and some little boys can, and do, get erections.

(In some ways, in more than forty years, not a whole lot has changed for me.)

I know this is not a site about sexual fetishes and I have no wish to alter that by going into any greater detail (though perhaps the sexual charge or frisson that men experience around legwear could be explored more fully); I tell the story purely as an illustration that this predilection can start so young that a genetic component is surely implicated.

How can I be sure I was really that young?

The family left London and moved into a new house in the country in March 1966. We visited the house before it was finished, possibly after Christmas, but most likely in the autumn of 1965. I would have been three; my birthday is in December. That morning as my mother was preparing the family for the trip, there was apparently none of my usual clothes to wear and she produced a yellow, double-breasted cardigan that had belonged to my sister (almost five years my senior) that she deemed effectively unisex in style (she certainly would never have wanted to feminize her boys) and she tried to persuade me to wear it over my vest or singlet. Taken quite by surprise, and aware that my brother (15 months my senior) had always refused to wear it because he got the idea it was too girly, I protested and made a scene.

My mother, having no time for this, gave up in exasperation and left the matter in the hands of my eight-year-old sister who had little difficulty in persuading me to wear it because, of course, I was secretly thrilled. But she didn’t normally choose my clothes, that was my mother’s domain, and because I had made such a fuss, (and despite having apparently happily worn the offending garment for the rest of the day – my mother never was very observant) my mother never suggested I wear it again, much to my disappointment, and, of course, I couldn’t risk have my brother hear me request it.

If things had been different and the family had been less judgmental and I had been allowed to choose freely from a range of available clothing options, I know I would have spent most of my childhood in a variety of sweaters and cardigans, girly in style or not, with winter weight tights on my legs of varying colours, worn with shorts or perhaps even short skirts, at least in the privacy of the family home.

Guess how I like to dress today, at age 45?

I have always had difficulty repressing my true inclinations and accommodating the need to dress in standard masculine attire. I’ve never been that keen on shirts, for example and tend to wear a lightweight sweater instead as many women do. And as for trousers, I could probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of pairs I’ve had in my life that I actually really liked and enjoyed wearing. This is not helped by my build (I’m average height but pretty slim) and finding trousers that fit well and look good is far from easy. Shorts are not quite so problematic because there’s less of them to fit poorly, but really, were it not for the prejudices of the society, it would make a lot more sense for me to wear tights and skirts.

As a primary school kid I was always one of the last in the school to exchange my shorts for longs when the weather got colder. I would have been a lot happier if I could simply have foregone the long trousers altogether and worn tights under my shorts through the cooler months. Except I wouldn’t have been, of course, because the other kids would have made my life hell. One of my friends revealed at school that another wore his sister’s tights under his long trousers (at the behest, I believe, of his rather over-bearing mother) having apparently discovered this on a weekend visit to the kid’s house. The poor boy’s embarrassment was acute and I wouldn’t be surprised if he remembers the whole unhappy episode in precise detail to this day. I’m afraid to say I may well have participated in the ridicule, at least to some degree, no doubt glad that my own inclinations were a secure secret.

I remember being at least a little embarrassed wearing shorts to the open day of the secondary school I was to go to, when, of about 120 boys, I was about the only one so clad. Clearly it was time to grow up and start dressing like a man. Well, there’s no fun in that for me and it’s often less than truly comfortable too.

I’m sure visitors to this site are aware, there’s nothing so comfortable as a pair of good-fitting tights.

If you would like to comment on this entry, please click on the 'Comments' link below.

tags: nylon gene  childhood  opaques  unisex  sister  shorts  

links: technorati