Foundation Wear

A lot of foundation wear is excessive, especially in hot weather. Women wear thin, light-colored dresses in hot weather and then must wear a slip to not have everything on display. 

It's insane. We can't design clothes for hot weather that doesn't require a second layer underneath?? 

Are we too incompetent? Or do we just hate women that much?

Years of poverty and other extenuating circumstances have let me mostly skip it for more than a decade. I would like to return to dressing more "normally" someday but we desperately need to do something about the torture devices that most women's undergarments constitute or I just CANNOT.

Some of this boils down to designing outer garments to not require foundation wear. We could do that instead of being intentionally cruel to the customers that pay the bills for the women's fashion industry. 

Garter belts are vastly more comfortable and practical than thigh highs or pantyhose. Though I also have been known to skip hose entirely for business casual, which French women also do in hot summer months, if I recall correctly. 

I far prefer front-closing bras to the arcane torture devices that most bras are. You slip them on like a vest and can both SEE and easily reach the closure.

When I was a relatively skinny thing in my youth, I mostly wore panties that were like a string bikini with just a little bit of elastic holding the whole thing together. 

Bonus: I never had to buy pregnancy panties. My panties were BELOW my distended tummy and not impacted at all by being high pregnant. 

Problem: These tend to not be available when you are generally chunkier. Plump girls are expected to wear "granny panties" (a la Bridget Jones Diary).

Surely if someone cared, they could find a reasonable solution? 

I owned a few slips but rarely wore them. The older I got, the more I tried to buy darker clothes made of a heavier material that didn't require me to wear a slip beneath it. 

Half slips for wearing under a skirt are much more comfortable than full slips. If you just must wear some flimsy skirt or dress, consider going with a half slip or half slip plus camisole.

Speaking of camisoles, we really should do more to give comfortable, practical options to women who are small busted. Camisoles with built-in cups should be more commonly avaliable and get more press as an option for those who need more coverage than support per se.

(I vaguely recall hearing someone say this was a European thing and they special ordered them post-mastectomy. If accurate, America needs to get with the program.)

Slips are notoriously non stretchy. I have a serious medical condition. I need my clothes to have some give. It makes me crazy to put a non stretchy slip under a knit skirt, thereby undermining the entire goal of wearing knits to begin with. 

Can someone work on this issue?

Women's tops and dresses are terrible about being made out of thin material with excessively large neck holes (yes, I know it's "neckline") and arm holes for sleeveless items. If you design tops and dresses like this and do not provide a line of bras that can be worn with them and not show, I basically hate you.

Women are treated like they are trash if their bra shows, meanwhile the fashion industry makes it nigh impossible to actually cover your bra. I cannot possibly state how strongly I feel this should be "a hanging offense."

Also: I love cap sleeves. They are a zillion times better than being sleeveless.

But good luck finding them!

It would also make it easier to both stay cool in summer AND "dress respectably" AKA NOT have your bra straps on display while not dying of heat prostration. But clearly my expectations in that regard are insane judging by what we actually make available in stores.

I have, in fact, owned a tank top and a sports bra that could be worn together without the bra showing. It sticks in my mind because someone flat out told me I was "braless" since my bra didn't show in a tank top.

So it CAN be done. 

Yes, you can get bras without straps or racer straps etc. to try to wear under things where normal bras would show. They tend to be hard to find and most are even more uncomfortable than "standard" bras.

This should not be the case. It should be easier than it is to get good support for your bosom without it showing and without it making you miserable.

I routinely recommend men's t-shirts as women's wear. The neckline actually comes up to your neck, the material is thicker and the quality is flat out better than for women's t-shirts. 

So it's standard practice to use extremely thin, flimsy material for women's clothing and then require extra foundation wear to make up for it. This is not the world I want to live in.

Give me outerwear with adequate coverage and more minimal undergarments that are actually comfortable. 

Yes, I do know that in some cases women really, truly need heavy duty support garments. I was briefly a double D cup bra size and preferred underwire bras at that time.

I had ONE that was genuinely comfortable. The rest were not and cost a fortune. 

There is loads of room for improvement. We just have to make it a goal to design clothes first and foremost to be comfortable, practical and functional.

No, I'm not asking you to buy clothes off The Ugly Rack.

Currently, we expect women to only care how they look and to be willing to suffer to achieve The Look. And if you aren't rail thin, you are assumed to have neither taste nor self esteem.

If you think my desire to be comfortable in my clothes means I don't care how I look, you are part of the problem. 

I like looking good. I'm willing to work at it and even suffer for it. (I did a lot of hair removal in my youth on a pain to benefits ratio policy.)

But a lot of the pain and suffering women's clothing imposes is pointless, gratuitous and wholly unnecessary. It amounts to a form of misogyny where you are expected to be miserable in order to conform to what the world demands you look like to leave the house at all.