Part Two, Manicures in Barbados
It’s been a wonderful, relaxing afternoon out on the cool, blue sea, but all good things must come to an end and as the light begins to fade we’re skimming over the water, heading for home. We pass between the headlands and into the sound that leads up to town with its harbour and marinas. Way back in Victorian times the open-mouthed sound was transformed into a secure anchorage for the Royal Navy by the building of a massive breakwater across its entrance. Apparently there is over four million tonnes of rock in it. How they managed to quarry all that, ship it out here and form it into the impressive structure that still stands today using just shovels and horses is beyond me, but they managed many great feats in those days. It’s a time we hear a lot about now, but the toil and poverty and sickness, and the hypocrisy of that society is never mentioned. We hear of a time when we ruled half the world and led the way in the industrial revolution, and of course a time when the ladies knew how to dress.
As we pass the west end of the breakwater and its distinctive lighthouse, it’s time for James to drive and for me to transform myself back into a lady. In theory I could remain a scruffy urchin on the boat right up to the point where I step ashore, this being a foreign-flagged boat and all, but our French flag also means that our boat is technically a guest here and could be told to leave if the authorities took a dislike to it. And so there’s a sort of unwritten understanding that unladylike appearance on foreign-flagged boats is tolerated as long as it is kept a discreet distance offshore. Driving into the marina looking like it’s 2020 again is just asking for trouble.
My clothes are still lying in the cabin where I left them. My dress, thrown disrespectfully on the port berth in my haste to be free of it. My gloves beside it, my boots discarded on the floor and the mass of petticoats and underwear crumpled on the other berth. At least my hat seems to have received some respect, being nestled in a box on the table. And the bitter-sweet feelings are here again. They fill me whenever it’s time to get dressed. I love being a woman and being feminine. I love dressing up and looking fabulous and I can think of nothing worse than going back to the days of ripped jeans and dreadful shoes. I even love wearing all this stuff even though it’s cumbersome and restrictive, not to mention bloody expensive. But it should be my choice. I should do it because I want to, not because I’m forced to by the law. Today though, my ambivalent feelings about it all can be pushed aside because I’ve got a guilty little masochistic pleasure to come.
I was a devotee of corsets long before the law of the land got involved. I fell in love with not only the way they made me look, but also the way they made me feel. The sensation of being hugged and shaped by something so beautiful, yet so stringent and so demanding of total obedience is something that captivates me completely. Add to that the excitement of looking as sexy as hell itself, and suddenly those little things like breathing and freedom of movement don’t seem very important at all. It took me many months of tightly laced determination, probably mixed with a fair dose of masochism to get my waist to where it is now, and I’m insanely proud of it. Eighteen inches outside the corset, so probably not much more than seventeen inside it. There was a time when I could get down to sixteen inches and could bear it for the duration of a party or a night out, but that was when I was young and mad. In the wisdom of my late thirties, eighteen inches seems entirely sensible.
But such a waist is not a natural thing and once achieved it must be confined inside a corset constantly to prevent it returning to its natural, unsightly state. Even just an hour of freedom sees my waist start to swell and makes for a challenging experience when the corset is re-applied. And the longer I am unrestrained, the harder the re-lacing becomes. Today my waist has been flopping about like an undisciplined jellyfish for nearly six hours. I should re-lace myself slowly over a similar time to avoid the agonies of an overly hasty abdominal reorganisation, but where would be the fun in that when I can get James to do me in a few minutes and crush the breath from me, make me practically faint, and then come round to find Captain Caveman is on the job. Well we’re not in any hurry to get home…
I remember the first time I wore a proper corset. It was not a happy experience. It was just after Madeline Peterson was shot. Like most Ninnies I worshipped and idolised ‘Our Maddy’ and when she was killed I thought the world had ended. Oh how I cried and mourned for her. In the days that followed, the image of her in that dress was everywhere. The image of the perfect woman, the leader of our country, an example to the world, completely at ease with, and unashamed of her sexuality. And now she was gone and as the mourning began it seemed fitting that I should mourn her in the style that she had lived and died by. Through my contacts in TV-land I hired a historically accurate late nineteenth century mourning outfit, a black dress complete with gloves, bonnet, veil and of course a huge skirt. It was of historically accurate proportions too and I had to wear a corset to get into it. In other circumstances it might have been fun and sexy but there was no joy in it at all for me. I went to London and paid my respects while Our Maddy lay in state and no-one seemed to look at my strangely anachronistic outfit as if it was weird or outlandish. Indeed there was no shortage of others, mainly women, who were doing the same thing. Most were wearing hastily improvised outfits, just a long skirt and a hat with a veil, but the intention was clear. It was all very black, very sad, and very dignified. I wore that outfit every day for a month. It seemed like to take it off was to finally admit that she was gone, but eventually things pass and the time comes to move on.
It was nearly a year before my next encounter with a corset. As the anniversary of Our Maddy’s death approached, the internet was buzzing with talk of the next Dress Relief and how we were going to commemorate her. For us Ninnes it was all about continuing what she had started. The historical dress idea was forgotten and it just became about emulating our idol. Maddy Day, as we began to call it, was to be about recreating the iconic image of her on that fateful day. That meant bustles, big bustles, hats, gloves, boots, tightly fitted bodices and all the paraphernalia of the late Victorian look. This was to be no black day of mourning though. This was to be a celebration of style and femininity, of colour and beauty, and it was turbo-charged by chatter on the internet. Our outfits became the worst kept secrets in history and one-upmanship kept pushing us all further and further towards complete authenticity and excess. All over the country, boyfriends and husbands went neglected while sewing machines whirred away deep into the night. And mine was no exception.
As a passionate Ninne and disciple of Our Maddy, I was of course in the thick of it all. I actually made myself two outfits, one, a slightly practical but still very authentic looking day dress, and two, a wonderfully gothic looking evening gown in a deep, dark red Taffeta, trimmed with black lace and dangling black beads, sporting a perfectly proportioned bustle, a ridiculously long train and a little loop to enable me to gather my skirts and hold them up with my wrist for dancing in the style of a true Victorian Belle. And perhaps I gained some inkling into just why ladies of the period went to such extremes in their attire. In an age before the Range Rover and the Mercedes-Benz one had to have some way to show one’s status and outshine one’s rivals in an arms race of fashion. And of course for me to carry it all off and look truly authentic I was going to have to get my waist under control.
The phrase ‘made a rod for my own back’ would seem to be particularly appropriate for me at this point. Who knows, perhaps that phrase had its origins in the world of tightly laced Victorian waists. I had made both my Maddy Day outfits from authentic, vintage patterns and had casually assumed that I would be able to squeeze myself into them without any great trauma, as I had with the mourning dress. It was only when I went to get an appropriately sized corset made that I discovered the challenge I had made for myself. With less than a month before the big day, I had to lose some nine inches off my waistline. It was a feat I managed, but only with a bucketful of grim determination, stubbornness, masochism, and two training corsets before the final, knock ‘em dead, wasp-like creation that got me into my dresses. It was so tight that I nearly fainted twice at our big evening party when I overdid the twirling around the dancefloor. But through it all I discovered the feeling and the looks that come with being tightly laced. I fell in love with both and it has become something of an obsession ever since.
Maddy day was a huge success. It seemed like most of the country had entered into the spirit of it. Even the British weather joined in, providing beautiful sunshine and letting the street parties roll on into the night. Hundreds of millions of pounds were raised for good causes and charities, but more importantly, the spectre of Maddy’s death was put to bed in a blaze of quirky British daftness, of fun and excess, and of femininity at its most extreme. I myself became something of an icon for it all after I posed for someone to take pictures of me in my gothic red dress. I didn’t know at the time that the photographer was a journalist and his picture of me nonchalantly looking over my shoulder seemed to crop up everywhere after the event. You can imagine how proud that made me. The world looked on at us crazy British and shook its head in disbelief. Everywhere else in the Western world still seemed obsessed with feminism and equality, and they regarded us with a mixture of amusement, scorn and perhaps even a little envy.
With so much effort and expense having gone into our Maddy Day outfits, it seemed to a shame to wear them for only one day. Many of us more extreme Ninnes decided we wanted show off ourselves and our creations for a bit longer and we extended Maddy Day into Maddy Week. I remember the fun and excitement of trying to cope with real life in a modern world of cars, buses and office chairs not designed for ladies in full length bustled skirts and corsets. And I remember how helpful and polite everyone was. I remember how I was struggling to get off a train, managing my skirts with one hand and trying to carry two heavy bags with the other, and how an anonymous stranger intervened, took my bags and escorted me to the taxi rank with them. And how the taxi driver got out of his cab and opened the door for me and put my bags inside. Everywhere I went I was met with smiles and politeness and chivalry. Such a change from the ‘ignore-everyone-and-just-get-on-with-my-own-life’ society that we normally lived in.
oOo
I never can resist Jazz when she wants me to lace her up, and it’s completely dark by the time we get back to the marina. Jazz stands at the outside helm and steers the boat through the maze of flashing red and green lights that mark the channel, while I get the fenders and lines ready. I’m not sure how she manages to see in the dark through the lacy handicap of her veil, but somehow she gets us in safely and brings the boat to a halt, perfectly positioned alongside our pontoon. The sight of her apparently in command and me taking the deck hand role would probably raise some disapproving eyebrows in some quarters, but I’m sure the sight of me driving and Jazz jumping off the boat onto the pontoon with a mooring line each in hand would send those same eyebrows into orbit, assuming of course that my mediocre boat driving skills were actually able to get us alongside and that she could actually jump ashore with her legs captive inside that magnificent skirt and her feet laced into the precarious boots beneath it.
With the boat safely tied up, I help Jazz step onto the pontoon and she waits while I pack the picnic bags and gather up our stuff. It’s cool now and she has a shawl wrapped around her shoulders to catch the heat that escapes from her daringly low cut dress. When I join her on the pontoon she shoots me a mischievous smile gives me a big kiss.
“Thank you for today Husband,” she says. “Best day out for a while I think. And all thanks to your mechanical prowess with the water pump.”
“Your prowess I think. I just acted as your hands,” I reply, trying to be modest, but feeling rather proud and flattered.
“But you did take rather a long time about it, and now it’s going to be too late to start cooking when we get home. So you can buy me a takeaway. Chinese I think. I fancy sweet and sour.”
With that she turns and jauntily heads off along the pontoon towards the car park. I watch her go, slightly mesmerised by that tiny waist and the bustle which wiggles tantalisingly as she walks. The tip-tap of her boots on the wooden planking and the rustling of her skirts fade as she melts away into the semi-darkness of the dimly lit marina. I look down at the bags left for me to carry, because of course a lady never carries her own bags, and I think of the engine that I had to fix, and that I will now have to drive her home and buy her dinner along the way. And it all makes me wonder, which is actually the oppressed sex in our brave New Society.
Words like oppression, subjugation and discrimination were not in the vocabulary that Madeline Peterson spoke from. She was a leader who led by example. A leader with a vision. A vision she sought to achieve not by conflict, but by inspiring her followers and converting her critics. And she was extremely good at both. She spoke of ending the competition between the sexes and the obsession with equality, and replacing them with a partnership in which we accepted that men and women were different, with a complimentary set of skills and values, and neither was better or more important than the other. ‘A man can build a house’ she used to say, ‘but it takes a woman to turn that house into a home. And while a woman can probably mix cement and lay bricks as well as any man, is that really what we want for ourselves? Let the men build the houses, for that is what they are good at, and let the women make those houses beautiful places to live in, for that is what we are good at. And then let us all marvel at what we have built together and enjoy it all as equal partners in its creation.’ Stirring stuff for some, the stuff of nightmares for others. The Nists said she just wanted to turn the clock back to a time when women were second class citizens, slaves that were owned by their husbands and only good for making babies and cleaning.
Mrs Peterson’s death shocked the nation to its core. Despite her controversial vision she was much loved by the population and her short tenure in charge had been a period of prosperity and reinvention for a country that previously seemed to have lost its way. The increasingly bitter and polarised divide in the female population had only slightly tainted a renaissance that most were keen to continue, and the resolve to continue it hardened considerably after the woman who had championed it was murdered so shockingly. Despite their protestations that the assassin was not one of them and had acted alone, the nation blamed the feminists and turned on them in something that resembled an only slightly milder version of Kristallnacht. Prominent Nists were vilified in the popular press. Many were jeered or spat at in the streets and had their property vandalised. It got worse when it emerged that the assassin had in fact attended meetings of her local Nist group and was employed as a journalist by an online feminist newspaper. The leaders of the feminist movement went into hiding after most received death threats and some even had their houses burned. The footsoldiers of their movement faded into obscurity or disguised themselves as Ninnes, and the majority of the population, female and male, who were ambivalent about the whole New Society thing, were horrified that such things could happen in their country, but they said nothing and moved to distance themselves from the scapegoats.
With the voice of opposition now silenced and Madeline Peterson elevated to a god-like status, the road seemed open for the New Society to be born, but with its champion now gone the movement stuttered and struggled to find that road forward. It did however manage to get that metaphorical foot in the door. The door that had been pushed so tightly shut by sixty years of feminism. Mrs Peterson had been the front woman and voice of New Society, but it had not been a one woman outfit. Her deputy and successor was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, one Mitchel le Boutellier, and he unsurprisingly vowed to continue what ‘Maddy’ had started. He was widely respected as something of a genius and he was thought to have masterminded the government’s plan to deal with the huge financial cost of what his Prime Minister had been advocating, but he had none of her style or charisma. He had no Power of Sexy. And being a man it was awkward for him to lead a movement that wanted to create such change for the opposite sex. Coming from a man it felt like bullying or oppression. But he laid the foundation for what was to follow. Unthinkable only a few years before, he started to change the law of the land to allow women to be considered as different from men. Layers of legislation that protected women from discrimination and sexism, hard won over decades of campaigning, were swept away, and the voice of opposition was nowhere to be heard.
The changes that made women not just biologically, but also legally ‘different’ to men were initially met with a silent unease but it seemed to evaporate rather quickly. While his predecessor would have brought about change by consensus, Mr le Boutellier preferred the ‘stick and carrot’ approach and he gave away plenty of carrots up front. Women’s tax allowance was increased to double, and later triple that of men, which meant that the majority of women ceased to pay income tax altogether. There was free travel on public transport for women, a state provided wage for mothers, and subsides on women’s clothes and other ‘feminine’ products. Mr le Boutellier said that if women were to be charged with making the country beautiful then they deserved a little helping hand, and his giveaway reforms were accepted with some degree of enthusiasm. But many of these new ‘benefits’ had hidden consequences that would not be seen until later. The mother’s wage for example, enabled women to stay home and look after their children instead of having to go back to work and rely on childcare, and that was all very nice, but if women were at home then they weren’t out pursuing their careers and elevating themselves to positions of influence. And if women were tempted out of their cars and onto public transport because it was free for them, then that made for societal change; men would drive while women got the bus. Even the subsidising of things like women’s clothes had a hidden agenda because now there had to be a legal definition of what exactly counted as clothing for a woman and what did not. And this seemingly insignificant little rule was to be used to devastating effect in the years to come when the carrot gave way to the stick.
oOo
I’m back at the car well before James. I can still walk pretty quickly despite all the stuff that’s wrapped around my legs. The layers of an elaborate skirt, a couple of petticoats and of course, a bustle cage don’t slow me down like they used to in the early days. And neither do my four inch heeled boots. Above the car park there’s a do going on in the yacht club. I wonder for a moment if we should pop in there for dinner instead of getting a takeaway, but it’s a rather posh yacht club and they would probably frown at me on account of I’m still wearing a day dress rather than an evening gown. Back in The Victorian era, a time we’re supposed to be emulating nowadays, posh evening joints wouldn’t let a lady in if she was wearing a hat because that would show that she had walked there, whereas a lady without a hat must have come in a carriage. Such were the pressures of conformity and snobbery back then. Well I’m not taking my hat off just to go in there and I doubt if James has a tie with him either.
Speaking of James, here he comes, wheezing up the hill like an old steam train with our bags of stuff. He dumps them down by the boot of the car like they weigh half a ton and I’m thinking that it’s not always so bad being a lady. The car bleeps and flashes as James fishes in his pocket for the key fob. I look down at the door handle, but sod it, I’m a lady; he can open it for me. I wait serenely by the door while James humps the bags into the boot. He sees me waiting and gives me his resigned “oh-so-you’re-in-lady-mode” look as he comes to open my door. I give him my cheerfully smug “you-lot-made-the-rules, not-me” look as I get ready to climb into the car.
It’s not actually all that difficult to get into a car wearing a rigid corset and voluminous bustle skirt, but retaining one’s elegance and dignity while doing so takes practise and is a bit of an art. It is one of the many little skills we ladies have had to learn in order to survive in the modern world while wearing extremely un-modern clothes. The trick is to reverse up to the car, gather up your train if you have one, smooth your bustle down with both hands and lower your bottom into the car and onto the seat while keeping both feet on the ground outside. Once your bottom is safely on the seat and taking your weight, you can lift both feet and swing them into the car keeping your legs together and gathering your skirt in with your hands. Make sure before you get in that there is enough headroom to cope with your hat and hairdo because it’s just not cool to have them squashed against the roof, and beware of low-slung sports cars as your corset might prevent your bottom making it down low enough to reach the seat and you might get stuck half in and half out. Don’t ask me how I know that.
I and my skirt make it into the car unscathed and with a practised elegance, and our SUV has more than enough headroom for all but the most flamboyant of hats. I smile smugly, and I think rather sexily at James again to let him know that he can now close the door. I could close it myself but what the hell, I’m busy being beautiful. I’m also busy discreetly wiggling my bottom cheeks to get them comfortable on top of my squashed up bustle cage. I’m glad it’s made of hi-tech soft, springy plastic. The old steel wire jobs used to poke you in all manner of delicate places when you sat on them.
Modern technology does make it easier to manage day to day existence in a beautiful, but tight, restrictive and cumbersome outfit. When it all started with that first Maddy Week it was all very different. If you were lucky you could still find a corsetiere to make you a made-to-measure corset, but everything else you had to make yourself. Not just the dresses but the underwear too. Maddy week was such a success and was such fun that many of us didn’t want to wait a whole year to do it again and so fancy dress parties known as Maddy Bashes started happening. At first we tended to travel to a Maddy Bash wearing normal clothes and got changed at the venue, but it took such a long time to get changed and dolled up and we soon got fed up with lugging all our stuff with us. It was much simpler to just get ready at home and then travel to the Bash already ensconced in our fabulous dresses. And it was fun and exciting to travel like that. Sometimes the journey was better than the party itself. No-one seemed to think our bizarrely anachronistic outfits were weird or freakish. We turned heads for sure, but it always seemed to be in a good way, and as the Maddy Bashes became a regular weekend thing, the sight of Victorian ladies making their way through the streets became fairly normal and accepted. And everyone was so friendly and polite to us. Doors were held open for us, bags were carried for us, drinks were bought for us, and all because we were dressed like ladies from a bygone age when chivalry was still order of the day. I would sometimes drop a hanky in a crowded place just to see how many men would rush to pick it up for me, and I never had to pick it up myself, which was probably just as well because getting your hand to reach the floor while wearing a corset and high heeled boots under your dress and not losing your ladylike dignity in the process, was something of a challenge.
As the demand for Victorian style grew, the clothing industry responded, providing wonderful items like corsets made from super breathable fabrics and with lightweight carbon fibre boning. Ultra-springy plastic bustle cages that would pop back into the perfect shape instantly, even after a long train journey and hours of being sat on and squashed flat. Skirts made from slippery materials that dirt and wet could not stick to, even after accidently walking through a puddle. Mass produced dresses that we could adapt and customise instead of having to start from scratch with a pattern. As it all became easier and cheaper, more and more women joined in for an occasional Saturday night of feminine fun, and some, like me became regulars at it. There was hardly a month went by without me attending a Maddy Bash somewhere.
These were happy and carefree times for many women. The shock and grief of Maddy’s assassination had faded and it seemed like we were all keeping alive the legacy she had left behind. We felt like she would have been proud of us, and it was as if she was still with us in spirit, watching over us and approving of what we were doing. Many of us had more money in our purses too, thanks to the tax reforms and subsides that were introduced. It was a great time to be a Ninne. We had no idea that something sinister was starting to brew, that Maddy’s dream was about to be hijacked and corrupted, and that we were sowing the seeds of our own subjugation.
By this time I had finished at university and had a shiny certificate to hang on the wall saying I had a degree in illustrative art. More importantly I had now reached an age at which I could legally apply for a pilot’s licence. But another considerable hurdle had to be overcome before I could pursue my dream of flying for a living. In order to be eligible for a commercial licence I had to have forty eight flying hours in my log book. Of course I had flown many times that number with my dad, but they had all been unofficial and borderline illegal. My dad had never been a certified instructor and I had been too young, so my experience didn’t count. I had to start from scratch and do forty eight hours with an official instructor, and I had to pay for it. Even in the cheapest of helicopters it was going to cost about three hundred and hour, plus fuel, plus the instructor. I wasn’t going to get much change out of twenty thousand, an impossible sum for an unemployed ex-student like me. My dad had warned me all along about the pitfalls, and that while flying was a great job that I would be able to travel the world with, advertised vacancies were few and far between. And it was virtually impossible for a newly qualified pilot with hardly any hours to get themselves employed when there were dozens of ex-military pilots about with thousands of hours of experience. Despite his warnings he offered to lend me the money on those parent loan terms where it is never expected to be repaid, but it didn’t seem right to accept it. My dad was retired by then and his health was not great. I wasn’t about to deplete his pension pot to get what I wanted. I vowed to get a job and raise the money myself.
And so I got myself a job. Well sort of. At uni I had shared a flat with another student, a girl called Jane McCormick who was studying graphic design. We became good friends despite the fact that she was a committed Nist. Oh, the arguments we had about it all. Sometimes I could make her so angry she would throw things at me, but we always made up afterwards. She had a dream of being an author and after uni she got an advance from a publisher to develop an idea she had for a series of science books for kids. And she badly needed an illustrator because although she could write and design beautiful stuff, she couldn’t draw or paint for toffee. She called me for help and I was happy to oblige, even though the initial money involved left my pilot’s licence a long way off in an uncertain future.
For four months Jane and I worked on her book. We worked well together and our overlapping and complementary skills produced what we felt was some really good material. I used to joke that we were like men and women, different but complimentary, greater than the sum of our parts, and definitely not the same, but she wouldn’t bite like she did when we were at uni. She seemed to have mellowed and become more serious. I felt like she was a flower that had become stuck as a bud. I couldn’t help wanting her to break out of it; to cast off her drab shell and be the woman she could be if only she could find the spirit and the confidence. I suppose she was technically the boss, being as it was her book idea and she had secured the funds to develop it, but it never felt that way. She treated me as an equal partner and I respected her for that.
And then came the day we had to go and present our work to the publishing company. This was a big, make-or-break meeting at which they would decide whether to fund us right up to the first completed book or cast us adrift as an idea that didn’t work out. Jane was sick with worry and stress. She became worse as the day became imminent and seemed hardly able to function. I decided that although it was her book and her idea, I would front our presentation. I didn’t think it would be difficult. I was confident that our work was top notch, and the commissioning panel would likely be a bunch of middle aged men whom the Power of Sexy would make short work of.
But when we arrived at the publishing offices and met the panel, it consisted of three men and three women. At first it was hard to know who was actually the boss. They all introduced themselves with bland titles like ‘head of marketing’, or ‘head of media’, or ‘head of creative’, but as we got started I began to work out who was the one that held the power and would decide our fate. That was the oldest looking of the women. About forty, blonde, attractive, well dressed, and obviously immune to the Power of Sexy. I had always thought that the Power of Sexy would not work on a woman. Those little gestures, expressions, movements and reactions that a man hardly consciously notices, but that churn his loins and make him putty in your hands would all be seen straight through by a woman who was immune to their effects. She would see them for what they were; an attempt to subvert her judgement with sexual innuendo. So I put a lid on it and with Jane sitting quietly beside me I kept my presentation plain and to the point, and that was okay because I was confident that our work was good enough to speak for itself. But as I made my pitch I noticed something about the boss woman I was directing my attentions to. Little expressions, a hint of a smile, a movement of her lips. This woman had the Power of Sexy, and she was using it on me. It un-nerved me and I faltered in my flow. The woman swallowed and I’m sure I saw the tip of her tongue momentarily part her lips. Well that was it. Two could play that game. I put down the laser pen I had been using to point at the big computer screen at the end of the table. Pretending the pen was broken I got up and walked to the screen making sure my heels tapped on the tiled floor. I let all present, and Boss Woman in particular see my legs below my short skirt and the shape of my figure which was impressive even though I was then only in the early stages of my tight lacing journey. I stood by the screen and gestured to details on it, bending forward to show a little more cleavage and periodically pausing and asking Jane to change to the next picture on my laptop. I didn’t flaunt myself at them. I was no street hooker touting for business. It was subtle and measured, and it was ruined by Jane who completely missed what I was doing and found me another laser pen, forcing me to retreat back to my seat at the table.
When we stopped for coffee I went to the ladies room to freshen up and as I sat on the loo I wondered what I had just done. Had I won the day, or had I ruined everything? Had I just destroyed my friend’s dreams and put both of us out of work? And what if Jane had not spoilt it? What if we had taken that display of the Power of Sexy to its extreme conclusion? I had never done anything with a woman before. Kissed a few girls and messed around a bit at uni, but never actually had sex with another woman. What would it be like with this strange Boss Woman? Would we find a seedy hotel room so that her husband wouldn’t find out? Would we use our fingers on each other, our lips, even our tongues? Perhaps we’d have a dildo, or a vibrator, or even a strap-on. And then who would be doing who? Would she wear it and fuck me, or would I wear it and fuck her? Maybe we’d take turns. No. I would fuck her. I would wear the strap-on and she’d be kneeling on the bed, bent over and I’d be skewering her from behind. And she’d be writhing and screaming in pain and unbearable pleasure. And the strap-on would be black. I don’t know why black but it would be. With veins moulded into the side of it and a big bulbous knob on its end.
For the rest of the meeting I struggled to keep the hotel room scene out of my mind. I couldn’t look at Boss Woman without seeing her naked, bent over with her arse in the air and her fanny filled with my big, black rubber dong. And when she looked at me I’m sure she was imagining something too but of course I never found out what. Did the Power of Sexy win the day? Well I suppose I’ll never know, but it certainly didn’t lose it. They loved our stuff and they showered us with praise. More importantly they showered us with money too. Jane and I were on our way together, but I still find it strange that she saw nothing of the sexual storm that went on in that meeting. Maybe I imagined the whole thing.
oOo
I turn the car into our driveway and it crunches over the gravel to our front door. Jazz is always complaining about the gravel and how difficult it is to walk on in high heels. One day I’ll get the driveway paved just to shut her up, but for now she’ll have to settle for me just getting her door as close as possible to the house. I’m expecting another complaint about the driveway tonight, being as she seems to be in pedantic lady mode, but she says nothing and instead just offers her lips for a kiss. I of course oblige her and the delicate looking, but surprisingly stiff netting of her veil rubs against my nose and forehead as I do so. It seems somehow to make the moment more special; a barrier that separates us, yet brings us closer together.
After our kiss I get out of the car and as any gentleman should, I cross to her side to assist her in extracting herself from the car. Her pedantic lady mode is obviously fading because by the time I get to her door she has already got it open and has her feet on the much complained about gravel. She does however accept my offered hand to help her slide and lift her bottom off the seat and stand up. She says that bit is particularly difficult to do elegantly in a corset. As she stands, her skirt magically reassumes its unnatural, yet flattering proportions behind her as the hollow cage beneath it springs itself back to shape. Years ago women used to worry if their bums looked too big. Well at least that’s one burden they’re being relieved of now.
Jazz thanks me for my assistance and heads for the front door. Of course she doesn’t offer to carry anything. The bags, the takeaway dinner, even her parasol are all left for me to deal with. I grab only the takeaway and follow her into the house. The rest can wait till tomorrow.
In the hallway, Jazz already has her hat off and hanging on the stand. She’s busy working her fingers out of her gloves and she shoots me a jauntily smug little smile.
“Am I dressing, or undressing for dinner?” she asks cheekily.
“Err, undressing I think,” I reply. I know what Jazz’s idea of dressing for dinner involves and I’d like to eat this side of midnight. I also know what her idea of undressing involves, and I think it’s good to be able to see what delights are available on the desert trolley while eating one’s dinner, although I’ve had two deserts already today. Can I actually manage another?
Jazz’s skirt makes its characteristic swishing and rustling as she heads off up the stairs to ‘undress’. I make for the kitchen to warm up the dinner and put it out on plates. Then I put the plates on trays and take them into the living room. Jazz is ‘undressing’, so dinner on the sofa in front of the telly would seem to be appropriate. Here, in the privacy of our own home, the suffocating cage of rules that govern Jazz’s existence no longer apply. Her life outside in public is dominated by legal definitions. The way she has to present herself, both in terms of how she looks and how she behaves, is all laid down in law so that she can be charged with an offence if she doesn’t comply. Even the definition of ‘in public’ is legally defined when it comes to Jazz. Inside our house is pretty safe, as long as she doesn’t parade herself around in front of the windows with the lights on at night. In the garden is a bit trickier. Our back garden is pretty private and so it’s moderately safe, but it is overlooked by our neighbours’ upstairs windows and if the sight of Jazz exposing her legs to the sun offends them, they could grab a camera and make a complaint. The front garden is not safe. It has a high hedge between it and the public road, but the gateway is open and if some busybody or gender Nazi with a camera was to glance in and see Jazz in an illegal state then she would be in trouble. Beyond the garden is absolutely off limits to her unless she’s properly attired. She could of course push her luck and sneak out wearing something slack and comfy, and once she’s become anonymous in a crowd then she would probably be okay. It’s not all women who are constrained by the law the way she is, and some still do not do the Victorian dress thing, so she would not stand out like a sore thumb. But it would be like driving over the speed limit; if you do it regularly, sooner or later you’ll get spotted by a camera and you’ll be nabbed. Cars have registration plates through which they can be traced and their owners fined. People it seems, also have registration plates of a sort. Facial recognition software linked to CCTV cameras seems to be just as effective at tracking down wrongdoers. It’s just not worth the risk for her, and nowadays I think she’s so used to dressing the way she has to that she wouldn’t feel right doing anything else.
Jazz sidles into the living room in her ‘undressed’ state. Her hair, normally piled up on her head, is loose and cascading over her shoulders. The dress with its skirts and petticoats is all gone, replaced with a thin and sheer negligée which is draped around her arms and reaches right down to the floor. She has left the negligée open and through the gap I can see her breasts cradled in her corset whose vertical red and black stripes emphasise the curve of her tiny waist. The roomlights glint off the shiny metal clasps of the corset’s busk. A silk slip billows out from under the corset, but only slightly, for it is confined by her suspenders and it just fails to cover a pair of black and pink panties. The suspenders are attached to black stockings which make her legs contrast with the delicate peachy-pink of the negligée as they descend to a pair of high heeled mule slippers. I never tire of seeing her like this and I wonder why women ever gave up wearing this kind of stuff. They spent so long fighting to try to win equality from men, and they could surely have had anything they wanted if they’d only kept looking like this.
Using the law to so utterly control women might be commonplace and even accepted now, but back in the days when Mitchel le Boutellier was Prime Minister even a hint of state-sponsored interference with women’s appearance was big news and deeply troubling for many. Madeline Peterson’s ghost still cast a long shadow, or shone a bright light depending on your point of view, and the quest for equality had given way to the worship and promotion of femininity. But what exactly was femininity and how was it supposed to be promoted? Was it about how a woman felt, or how she looked, or how she behaved? Mr le Boutellier said it was about all three of those, but that if just one could be nurtured and encouraged then the other two would follow. For example if a woman was encouraged to feel more feminine then she would make herself look more feminine and behave more femininely. Or alternatively if a woman was encouraged to look more feminine then that would make her feel more feminine and behave accordingly. There was a sort of simplistic logic to it and if Madeline Peterson had said it then it might have held sway, but she had a huge advantage over Mr le Boutellier in that she herself was a paragon of femininity. After she spoke, women were inspired and went away feeling they wanted to be like her, but when Mr le Boutellier spoke, women felt like they had just had a lecture about period pains from a middle aged, male, gynaecologist. What the New Society movement needed more than anything else was another woman to front their cause, and when they found her they must have thought they had struck gold.
Andorra Peterson had all of her mother’s looks and intelligence, and some of her charisma and charm too. She had not been a public figure while her mother was alive but she burst onto the national stage when she made a speech at a New Society conference, fourteen months after her mother’s death. Even before she opened her mouth she had made a statement and caused a stir by striding confidently onto the stage wearing a carbon copy of the iconic dress her mother had been murdered in. She said it was a tribute to her mother and a symbol that her dream was to live on. That style of dress became her trademark. She was hardly ever seen in anything else.
Andorra never became Prime Minister, or even stood for Parliament, but she rode the wave of her mother’s popularity and became like the country’s unofficial president. She would make speeches and give interviews and generally present herself as the mouthpiece of the government which increasingly looked like it was just a tool to do her bidding. Whatever she said, the government did. Of course the official line was that the government did, and she just informed the nation of its intentions, but few believed that to be the whole truth. What nobody knew at the time, was that the pretty face, the smiles and the charismatic talk were just a façade. Behind them lurked a lady poisoned with hatred and driven by that most basic of instincts, revenge. Revenge for her mother’s murder. Revenge against her killer and all that had inspired her to do such a deed. Revenge against feminists, indeed revenge against all women who had been too weak to stand up for themselves and dragged her mother into leading them and getting herself killed. She would turn her mother’s dream into a nightmare and then inflict it on women to punish them all. But like the good psychopath she was, she hid it all perfectly. She bided her time, consolidated her power, and picked her conflict only when she knew she would win.
Meanwhile the government’s agenda had stalled. The initial reforms introduced by Mr le Boutellier had made women rather wealthier, but if they were spending that extra wealth on looking more feminine then it didn’t really show very much. Critics said that ‘the men went to work and the women went to Barbados for a manicure’. The stick and carrot approach evidently now required some stick. But that was not an easy thing to do. You couldn’t simply make a law commanding women to be more feminine. At this point the politicians did what they usually do when they have an awkward problem; they sidestepped the issue and handed it to someone else to sort out. In this case, that someone else was the world of business and industry. Where once there had been equal opportunities, gender pay gap prevention, and anti-discrimination policies, now there were to be ‘gender diversity’ and ‘femininity promotion’ policies. Mr le Boutellier said that if companies adopted this kind of stuff then he would give them a carrot in the form of a generous tax break, but for the first time there was also to be a stick in that if they didn’t play ball he would hit them with a tax hike.
Business and industry do not have much of a social conscience. If there were to be tax breaks on offer, then they were going to be taken. The only problem was that someone actually had to write these policies and define exactly how ‘gender diversity’ was going to work. In the end there were two main areas that The Revenue’s bureaucrats decided made a policy worthy of a tax break. One was the classification of jobs as being suitable for a man, a woman, or both, and recruiting to fill those jobs accordingly, and the second was the introduction of feminine attire to the workplace. That meant dress codes, or better, uniforms for female employees.
Many people were unsurprisingly aghast at all this. The feminist voice, driven underground and silent for so long, resurfaced, although generally in an anonymous way. Posters and graffiti would appear with the phrase ‘An Unsuitable Job for a Woman?’ and caricatures of Mr le Boutellier in ridiculous uniforms popped up all over the internet. People protested, but the politicians shrugged and said individual company policies were their own affairs. Andorra Peterson did her bit for the cause by modelling some mocked-up uniforms. She described them all as ‘utilitarian but fun, formal but sexy, retro yet futuristic and exclusive but for everyone’. They all looked great on her in a photo-shoot, but the country remained sceptical and deeply uneasy. Encouragement of femininity was one thing, but this was the beginning of compulsion.