Few can forget the photo that flashed around the world when the bride-elect of Prince Charles, the future Princess Diana, as a young ingenue posed clueless and slipless with a child on her hip in a see-through skirt, her lower silhouette outlined for all the world to see. Well, she was baby-sitting, after all! Maybe she didn’t expect the paparazzi so early in the game!
But it was a bit comforting to know that such a faux pas, apparently accidental, happens even to the Royals. I thought of that one day when, as a pastor’s wife, I had worn a favorite dress to church. Very pretty, it had several voluminous layers over a dark built in slip. Waiting for church to start, I was standing talking to someone at the sound booth, when a lady tapped me on the shoulder. “Your skirt is caught in your waist elastic,” she whispered. I rushed to the bathroom and saw that at least one of the skirt’s layers was bunched up in a tangle of sheer fabric, hopefully revealing only another layer below. I had a full-length mirror installed in the ladies’ room the next day.
Today a Face book friend shared that she had been interrupted in the middle (or rather, at the start of) putting on makeup for work, and when she looked in the car mirror upon arriving at her job, she gasped. She didn’t say what she had omitted, but a trip to the cosmetic counter of a nearby store was necessary before she was ready to face the world.
That brought a flood of instances from other friends of embarrassing situations. It seems pantyhose is notorious for causing wardrobe malfunctions, with one reader in possession of a photo of her mother standing at the sink at Thanksgiving with her skirt tucked in her undies. She teases her mom that she will put it on her fb profile.
Once I was mortified when I saw a young matron parading around the front of the church, seemingly oblivious that she should have been wearing a slip under a thin, translucent skirt that was attracting attention. As discretely as possible, I pulled her aside and took her to the restroom, where I gave her the half-slip I was wearing, since she seemed to need it more than I did in my heavier clothing. (I thought I was doing her a favor, but she seemed mystified by my concern.)
While some opt for washing off an interrupted, half-completed makeup application and going barefaced, others would not be caught with a naked face and have learned to keep a survival kit for such emergencies. An extra set of clothes might be nice too, for say, a coffee-drenched ensemble, but one can’t prepare for everything. There will always be a slip somewhere.
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