When men wore tights...

Some time ago, I pronounced on the extraordinary cult of the female leg and how, in order to get anywhere in this world, a girl has to have hers eternally on display. It wasn’t always thus. In the Middle Ages, it was the male leg that endowed a man with status, while drawing orgasmic gasps from many a young maid. Just look at all those medieval images of men in tights. No wonder Robin and his merry men led such a successful Sherwood Forest campaign.

A few centuries down the line and Renaissance ladies swooned at the sight of illustrious alpha males such as Henry VIII prancing about in court dances devised especially to show off their pins – no wonder the Monarch drew six wives! The cult of the male leg continued until the eighteenth century although by now the appeal, like the leg, had been halved. Knee breeches covered the top half of the shank while the calf and foot were resplendent in silk stocking and buckled shoe.

By the nineteenth century, the cult of the male leg was on the wane, what with the advent of long trousers. However, there is in existence a painting of the young Queen Victoria in company with her beloved Albert, (name of the artist escapes me). The bright, red boots that encase his legs signal dangerously his most (to Queen Vic) erogenous zone. The curtain rises on the twentieth century and along with it, the hem of the female skirt. The male leg is dead forever. Methinks, what irony? Just as woman is freed from her whalebone corset, she is handed another zone to maintain. Ah me, if I could go back in time, it would be to when knights were bold and maidens young and old could conceal their less than perfect pins under full-length skirts. I’ll bet it was much warmer, too.