Free Leggy Blonde: A Memoir by Aviva Drescher Page B

tailored, classic, clean lines.
    In: dresses with leggings, short, tight tube skirts with leggings, and tapered jeans with zippers at the ankle. I had to leave the zippers undone over my prosthesis though. Parachute pants—like clown pants with a small waist, wide around the hips and tapered at the ankles—were really in. I couldn’t fit them over my ankle either, so I cut the hem. But I still wore them. I was making adjustments, and making fashion work for me.
    Whatever I wore, it was tight, tight, tight. My clothes had to be clingy enough to show my form. I was painfully thin. Anything looselooked like I was fighting my way out of a tent. The popular girls—a.k.a., the girls boys liked—had big boobs and shapely Paula Abdul thighs. I had zero curves. I was more insecure about being skinny than about having one leg. I tried to gain weight, but I just kept growing taller. I outgrew my prosthesis so quickly, I would have to limp for months while a new one was being made.
    I can almost hear women thinking, Yes, how awful it must have been for her, being so tall and thin . But think back to the skinniest girl in your high school class. The girl who looked like she’d been stretched on a rack. The ostrich girl. Now give that girl a big plastic leg and a limp. Get the picture? Blond hair and bushy eyebrows were not going to mitigate that.
    Some girls stuffed their bras with socks. I stuffed my thighs with long underwear. I put on two pairs under my jeans to flesh myself out. Instead of changing in the locker room for gym, I took my sweatpants into the bathroom for privacy. The girls thought I was embarrassed to show my leg. Wrong. I was mortified about the long underwear.
    I learned the art, the magic, of misdirection. (Maybe I had benefited from my summer with Sai Baba.) I could distract people from my skinniness and my leg with clothes and makeup in overdrive. I went full eighties. Madonna was my fashion hero. I did it all. Layered hair with bows, ripped Flashdance tops, leggings, multiple belts, leather jackets, and leg warmers, the one fashion trend that worked to my advantage.
    I couldn’t wear heels, sadly. I didn’t get a high-heel prosthetic until I was twenty-eight. I went as far as I could with flats. When shoe shopping, I wore a sock over my prosthetic. It put the salesperson at ease not to see too much. I would also make some comment like, “I’ll put the shoes on myself. Thanks. I wear a leg brace.”
    Doing it myself was far preferable to letting a salesperson do it.My mother and I used to pick out some shoes, and then the salesperson would kneel down and attempt to put the shoes on me. He would struggle getting the shoe on my prosthetic foot. Mom would say with sad eyes, “My daughter wears a prosthesis.” I wanted to kill her. The kids next to us would stare and I thought I was going to die of embarrassment. For a shoe salesperson, the experience must have been freaky. Probably like a guy taking home a woman he meets in a nightclub only to be surprised by a penis in her panties.
    With clothes shopping, my strategy was to find a private fitting room. In communal fitting rooms, like at Bloomingdale’s, I’d have a friend guard the door. I learned how to dress and undress at lightning speed. I didn’t want my leg to become the center of attention or distract my friends from trying things on. When salespeople noticed my leg, their faces would fall and turn serious. It was like puncturing the fun balloon. I would smile and say, “I wear a knee brace.” And everyone would relax. That was more palatable than a missing body part.
    My makeup and hair were flawless. My mom was my role model in that regard. The woman didn’t go to the grocery store without looking head-to-toe perfect. It was an old-school Germanic trait I think. She never let her appearance slip, not until the last few years of her life. I found it sweetly old-fashioned and fabulous that she always reapplied her makeup before my dad came home