No, really. What happened to sexy legs?

Do we not care about sexy legs anymore?

I sure care about them.  And considering it’s summertime–the worst time of year without a doubt–we should be thinking about, and admiring, all sorts of sexy legs.  Yet here we are, not even giving them a second thought, and what’s worse is that women don’t seem to care much about owning, never mind displaying and showing off, a good pair of sexy, sexy legs.  

What’s happened to society?  We are at a point of irreversible breakdown, sure, but I think the lack of public concern towards sexy legs might symbolize how much of a downward slide towards complete catastrophe we really are.  Big asses appear to have replaced sexy legs in the overall scheme of attraction and aesthetic goals, and to me, this will not do.  

Sure, fine, whatever, but what about sexy legs?!

I was reading through one of my favourite all-time websites, a gay gossip forum in which members start threads about absolutely any topic they think of.  I’m not anywhere close to gay, unfortunately (although one of my exes sure made some ugly slurs about my two very early attempts at experimentation), meaning that I have to put up with all sorts of male nonsense thanks to my biological, lusty pull to the hairy oafs.  While there is some very unacceptable, awful misogyny here and there on the site–I’m pretty convinced that the majority of men, no matter their orientation, actually loathe women and don’t see us as human, which is why a great deal of women feel the same way about them–it’s a great place to read about celebrity gossip, fashion pointers, ideas for recipes, up-to-date current events, and random thoughts about musical theatre.  And believe me, I have opinions about Ann Reinking’s butchery of “Against All Odds” at the 1985 Academy Awards.

Not too long ago, some guy on this gay site decided to start a thread about sexy legs. Very, very few people replied to this, given the readership, but if a gay man is mourning society’s indifference towards a hot set of pins, you know we’re in trouble.  I should also add that I’m only referring to women’s legs; while men can certainly possess nice-looking and shapely legs, it doesn’t really seem to be a main point of physical admiration.  Strong arms, lovely hands, a shapely butt, a big penis, a striking face…certainly.  Legs?  Not really.  Women’s legs, on the other hand, have deservedly been given recognition and celebration for ages, until–it seems–just recently.

Ann-Margret’s legs, with Ann-Margret.

In the past, you could use a pair of sexy legs to sell a movie, without a single clue as to what the movie was about.  Espionage?  Human monsters?  Childsploitation?  Corrupt accountants?  Pigeons chasing balloons through a war-torn urban hellhole? 

There is only one thing you’re paying attention to here, and it isn’t the helicopter.

Yes, you could successfully market a film using sexy legs, even if that film starred execrable, overrated, wildly unattractive sex pests.  And I think I speak for all of us when I say that the words “sexy” and “Dustin Hoffman” have likely never before been spoken in the same sentence.  

I don’t know if these are Anne Bancroft’s legs, but he sure couldn’t care less.

Back in the 80s, sexy legs were all the rage.  If you were a woman, and you were in shape, and you were in the public eye, you made darned sure to show off your hot stems, or at least, bring attention to the fact that you owned some.  Even a famously perky talking head, whose entire job was sitting behind a desk beside one of the world’s corniest musicians and chirping about the breakfast habits of Emilio Estevez, made it very well known that she insured her sexy legs with Lloyds of London, something I remember reading about in the National Enquirer when I was a mere wisp of a girl.

Were her legs sexy enough to insure for a million smackers?

Sexy enough!  

We also had Tina Turner’s limbs wrapped around all of our brains throughout the decade as she reignited her singing career and brought new meaning to faux-leather miniskirts.  She was venerated not simply for her stupendous voice, choice of songwriters, enthusiastic live performances, or hairdos that looked as though she had been tonguing a light socket, but she was equally as famous because of those sexy legs.  Or, as the British press like to call them, “slim pins.”

This isn’t even the best picture of her. Tina’s legs were icons.

Small aside: when I was about nine, and after watching the “What’s Love Got To Do With It” video a few times, I earnestly asked my mom if she would buy me one of those provocative pleather Tina Turner skirts, and her reaction was somewhere between uproarious laughter and grounding me for a week.  Then again, I was also the same clueless little girl who, when asked what she was going to be for Hallowe’en back in 1985, replied “a virgin” because I loved Madonna’s album despite not having a solitary clue as to what the word meant.  I thought it meant…a sexy woman with sexy legs!

Who wouldn’t want to be that for Hallowe’en?  If you say “me,” I say you’re just a very bad liar!  

The 80s celebrated this terrific female feature so openly and lustfully, there were even songs written about their might.  I’m not sure if the ZZ Top gentlemen are the sort of fellas I would want ogling my shapely shanks, but they certainly knew hotness when they saw it.  

Now, I don’t quite know where you draw the line between “sexy” and “too thin / too chunky.”  Sexy legs connote shape, strength, focus, power, confidence, and hot promise as to what may come next. They are a tease, a brazen flaunt, a means of flirting without having to say a word or even make eye contact; a way of conveying true sexuality without resorting to shameless advertisements of one’s primary or secondary sexual characteristics. And yes, I’ve resorted to such tactics.  They are a symbol of feminism with their attention to detail, and their conveyance of athletic prowess.

Eugenia Cooney, famous on YouTube for flaunting and denying her eating disorder. They will never yank her channel because she makes them money.

Somewhere along the way, however, we lost sight of the true glory of a pair of sexy female legs.  Fat acceptance perhaps got in the way, but I also think a generation and culture of sloth and sedentary habits–sitting in cars, sitting in front of computers, sitting around and watching TV, sitting and eating takeout food–has contributed to the lack of definition, musculature, and potency that characterize so many women’s legs now.  Aside from the above tragedy of Eugenia Cooney, there’s another fairly well-known woman on YouTube named Anna O’Brien, for example, whose entire and opposite claim to fame is her utterly bewildering, unnatural-looking hip-to-foot proportions.  And make no mistake: she capitalizes on this infamy, shows it off, and is given sponsorship opportunities because of her legs.

…she also understands how dangerously unhealthy she is and how peculiar she looks, because she just spent a ton of money flying to Los Angeles for supposed lipidemia surgery on those legs (not linking to that).

This, along with the abominable, legitimately evil empire known as the Kardashians, helped usher along a new point of interest on the female form.  As I said in my introduction, that would be the ass. The bigger–apparently–the better.

Everyone likes a nice ass, be it on a man or a woman; I just don’t understand, however, how everyone became convinced that a giant ass is nice.  Have you ever seen a woman with ass implants in the wild?  It’s completely unnerving, distracting, horrific.  Here in Vancouver, ass-implant sightings aren’t very common, but when they occur (I always assume they’re tourists, because Giant Ass Culture isn’t really prevalent here), traffic nearly screeches to a halt.  People cannot help but swivel their heads around, making sure they’re actually seeing what they’re seeing.  Facial expressions from the general public run the gamut from amused to terrified to perplexed: the proportions aren’t normal, the amount of weight the woman is chugging around on her backside isn’t right, the physics defy speculation, and it all just looks, quite frankly, out of this world. 

If this were due to squats or genetics, that’s fair. But I somehow doubt it.

If you’re genetically predisposed to having a large backside, or big thighs, or a big body part in general, then that’s what God gave you, and you’re not the one I’m referring to.  No, I’m not talking about naturally big butts (or breasts, or lips), because these features usually suit the person who possesses these traits.  I’m talking about fake asses, because they look fake. Fake breasts look completely fake.  Fake lips–implants or injections or whatever they are–might be the worst offenders, because they look so comically inauthentic, not unlike a baboon’s anus, and distort the remainder of what might actually be a perfectly attractive face. 

Then you have the women with the full meal deal of fake breasts, asses, and lips, and once you see the combo affixed to some troubled lady’s visage and form, it’s all you can do to not faint dead away.  I’ve seen it a few times in the dastardly neighbourhood of Yaletown, and it’s something else: these girls look inhuman, beyond exaggerated, and you can’t imagine what must have been going through their minds when they spent tens of thousands of dollars to look this way.

Now, I am all for buying good looks, if that’s what you desire.  I am an advocate of surgical intervention should one’s health and self-esteem be on the line, having gone through breast-reduction surgery many years ago. My overwhelmingly large boobs caused me great trauma and rage, and yet they still insist on sprouting back; it’s like fighting the goddamn Hydra. Surgery #2 isn’t out of the question, let’s just say that.  I simply don’t understand unnatural, bizarre body modification that is a social trend, like whalebone corsets or foot-binding shoes, where the end result is somewhat freakish and has eternal repercussions for the one undergoing such procedures.      

So here’s my plea: bring back sexy legs, one of the most organic, universal symbols of both femininity and strength, which should be synonymous. 

[UPDATED: THIS IS HOW AN ALMOST FIFTY-YEAR OLD DOES IT, AND I AM INDEED REFERRING TO MYSELF BECAUSE I CAN EASILY PUT MY NONEXISTENT MONEY WHERE MY LEGS ARE]

Take a gander at my own gams, if you’d like an example of what I mean:

Those are sexy legs, and they belong to me. Ergo, I have sexy legs. Happy? Good. I know I sure am. Now, swinging back to our original piece…

I don’t even think you can have surgery to get sexy legs, meaning that if you have a pair, you’ve put some effort into it. You don’t have to spend money on sexy legs, unless a gym membership counts.  For one thing, start walking.  Something happened a couple of weeks ago that sent pulses of white-hot rage through my already-overheated brain, and I was shocked by how angry I became over something that had nothing to do with me:

I live exactly four blocks from a McDonald’s.  If you’re going to actually spend money at that purveyor of toxic matter–never mind the fact that it’s now more expensive than just going to the supermarket and grabbing a piece of protein and a vegetable–then maybe you earned that ass.  But four blocks is only four blocks, and this shouldn’t even be an issue.  Heck, I once walked halfway across the city for one proper slice of wood fired-oven pizza, but walking is also my main source of transportation.  If you really need McDonald’s and it’s just a few streets away, you should walk your sloppy self down there and get your “food.” 

Having said all that, I have no problems admitting that I pop into that very McDonald’s semi-regularly for their iced coffee, which is a buck-fifty for a large size during the summer months and which is the best deal you’ll find if this is your beverage of choice.  Yes, I make my own at home, but two carafes of cold brew per day sometimes just isn’t enough. Am I a hypocrite? No. I’m not ingesting their laboratory-created fare, I’m getting a very cheap cup of cold coffee in a world where these things go for around seven dollars apiece.

Anyway, I was leaving my place (maybe to get an iced coffee, maybe to simply walk somewhere), and I saw that one of the tenants on the ground floor had a big paper sack outside of their door.  Not just any paper sack: a McDelivery bag.

 They got McDelivery.  These absurd, hopeless, mock-worthy people not only chose to eat McDonald’s, but they couldn’t even be bothered to walk out of their place and stroll a couple of blocks down the hill for their synthetic junk. They didn’t just pay for a bag full of inedible, stinking waste, but they paid extra to have a delivery person zip up the four blocks to deposit it in front of their suite.  

It made me so irrationally angry, so seized with disbelief and homicidal rage, I found myself not just walking, but stomping to my destination.  Somehow, it was even worse than the other crew in some other ground-floor suite who had several bags of groceries delivered to their door. A passing glance inside of these bags revealed potato chips, two-litre bottles of pop, paper towels, and soup.  I should add that we live 1.5 blocks away from a supermarket that specializes in these very items.  

Apart from me and the five other older people on my top floor, the tenants in this building are young, overweight, and can’t be bothered to walk a few short paces to buy garbage. The men are out of shape and go outside for cigarettes wearing pajama pants. The women are pretty much the same way. I can’t figure this out. I guess water seeks its own level, but doesn’t someone want to be sexy?

So all of this is to say: bring back sexy legs.  We’ll all appreciate it, and it would be a widespread indication that society is becoming more active, more self-aware, more mobile, more agile, more hopeful.  Do I think this will happen?  No.  Instead of putting one foot in front of the other and developing sturdy gams, we’re going to shoot ourselves up with Ozempic, compromise our internal organs, Instagram the deteriorating and malnourished results, and waste away even further.

Please, God, another Carrington event.  I beg you.  

Edited to add: My ex, who stalks me online and emails me about it regularly, wants everybody to know that I should credit him for a couple of topics that I have written about or briefly referenced on this blog, including the Carrington event, which is apparently such an obscure phenomenon, he is the only person on Earth informed about it. “Credit where credit is due, kid,” he actually wrote. Yes, he calls this 48-year old, educated, well-travelled woman “kid” and “kiddo.”

I would call him out by name, but that would make him very happy. I suppose mentioning him here will do just fine.