Whoever came up with the term “one size fits all” must have had a strange sense of humour. Either that or he was blind to not notice the vastly different shapes and sizes of the population.

I refer to the person as “he” as the term was obviously invented by someone who had never worn panty hose.

When I was about sixteen, panty hose were beginning to be widely available in England. Prior to that, women wore stockings. As a tall teenager the hope of finding stockings that were long enough was non existent. Stockings, like most things were designed for the “average” woman.

In those days, young girls wore a garter belt. This was a belt like, contraption of elastic and lace with four suspenders dangling from it, to attach to your stockings If the stockings were not long enough, they would pull the belt down over the hips, very uncomfortable and embarrassing, as it was a constant battle of wriggling and adjusting to keep them in the right place.

Come the arrival of panty hose and women rejoiced. The garter belt was left in the drawer and the freedom of panty hose was wonderful. However, some bright spark decided that women should not enjoy this new found convenience, so he coined the phrase “one size fits all”.

How can any fabric, no matter how marvellously stretchy it may be, fit a range of bodies that vary from one hundred pounds to three times that size and from under five feet tall to over six feet. It just doesn’t work.

For some reason, the manufacturers decided that the “one size” part of the design would be more easily arranged in the panty part of the panty hose. The legs seemed to be designed to fit a woman of five feet five inches, the panty part was big enough to house a family of four!

My five feet nine inch frame found the legs way too short but the panty part stretched from mid thigh to under my arms. To try and keep the crotch from slipping down around my knees, I wore an extra pair of panties over top. This meant I had to wear three layers of panty/panty hose/panty. Rather warm and inconvenient and the crotch still kept trying to creep down towards my knees.

Short women had wrinkles in the legs of their hosiery and goodness knows where they stashed all the extra fabric that came in the panty part. They probably cut holes in the sides and wore them like a tee shirt.

However, women adapted and, on the whole, enjoyed wearing panty hose. The gap that used to be between nylon stockings and underwear was now a thing of the past. Probably many men regretted this as that forbidden piece of flesh was always available for a quick grope, during the goodnight kiss, until panty hose filled the gap.

For women, it meant no wind whistling around your thighs and it also meant that skirts could be worn shorter and shorter….and shorter! I remember Dave admonishing me many times “not to lean over the pram”, as I fussed with the baby. Wherever one looked there would be nylon clad bottoms on view as women, in shirt skirts, bent to perform various tasks. In northern England, mini skirts were referred to as bum freezers. In the chilly, windy north, this was a rather apt name.

Over the years manufacturers have realized that women come in all shapes and sizes and have made panty hose available for all. Petite, regular, tall are all available but there is also queen size and extra queen which are designed to wrap a house. However many pairs still have an excess of fabric in the body part which has to be rolled down or pulled up to the armpits. As stated before, “One size fits all” is only good for a tent.