Oh Those Naughty Ankles

In Europe in the 1800s, many people were deeply afraid about the high illegitimate birth rates for the children of domestic servants.  The degradation of the morals of these poor unfortunates was of real concern to the Victorian middle class.  The rich and the noble built themselves little harems of domestic servants.  Sexual harassment laws hadn’t been invented yet, you see.  This prompted some very unusual conversations.

Rose: Who says money can’t buy happiness?
Fish: It can buy opportunities to procreate anyway.
Rose: Wait a minute, are your ankles covered?  Scandalous!
Fish: My ankles are covered, but my feet are bare.
Rose: Whore.

I drive those dangerous foot fetishists wild.  I also find Victorian social mores extremely amusing, if a little frightening.  The reason, for instance, that table and bed skirts exist is because the Victorians were worried that men would have sexual fantasies about the furniture, because due to an unfortunate linguistic occurrence, tables had legs. No one ever called them “legs”, this was indecent.  In polite conversation (though I’m not sure why anyone would make conversation about table legs) people called them “limbs”.  This makes my feet as sexual objects sound terribly reasonable in comparison.

Fish: *Wiggles toes* There are many people who consider these feet the best things since table legs!
Dad: You are a very strange child.
Fish: I’m sure I don’t know why.

I then promptly fell over because I was still trying to show him my amazing feet.

There are times when I don’t think we have come very far since the Victorian era.  For some reason, I usually come to this conclusion when people are trying to be kind.  My local pharmacy keeps all of the feminine hygiene and sexual health products down one aisle, so when my mother asked me to pick her up yeast infection medication, I dutifully found myself standing between the condoms and the pregnancy tests.  A very sweet old lady tottered over to me.

Little Old Lady: You really shouldn’t be down here dear.
Fish: Um, er, I, uh…

I took the Monistat and ran.