I dressed conservatively as a teen, never comfortable showing a bit more skin that necessary and avoiding the company of those who revealed too much. Which explains why I made my friend, Alta, change from a tight low-cut top to a more modest one before we went to a basketball game our senior year in high school. She really loved me to willingly put that purple leotard top back in her drawer.<\/p>\n
Though best friends, our styles continued to differ through college and on to the era of our weddings. Before I even glimpsed the bridesmaid gown Alta had selected for her wedding, she was on her knees begging me to wear it in spite of what it would reveal. The dress, a pale pink knit, was a halter dress, showing bare shoulders with no place for bra straps. A cut-out lace section, front and center, had too many gaps to even conceal a strapless bra.<\/p>\n
OMG.<\/p>\n
There was a thin wisp of fabric draped over the shoulders, but it covered nothing. Absolutely nothing. Late seventies, a formal wedding, and twenty-something-year-old me in public, bra-less, for the first time ever. I survived only by focusing my attention on the beautiful bride and convincing myself that everyone else was focused there as well.<\/p>\n
The dress hung in my closet for years, coming out only once in the nineties when I dressed as Gilligan’s movie star friend for a costume party. The revealing gown was perfect for Ginger.<\/p>\n
During the past twenty years, I’ve been mammogrammed, biopsied and lumpectomied so many times it seems most of the world has seen what I previously hid. The modesty is gone.<\/p>\n
As is the gown. I gave it to Alta last month. For old time’s sake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I dressed conservatively as a teen, never comfortable showing a bit more skin that necessary and avoiding the company of those who revealed too much. Which explains why I made my friend, Alta, change from a tight low-cut top to a more modest one before we went to a basketball game our senior year in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=224"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":225,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions\/225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}