Gams explained…or maybe not

Flanked here by all of this Wolford legginess, it seems appropriate to delve into the question: Why this preoccupation, obsession, even, with legs – with Killer Kalves? That they are so common, that great legs are to be found almost everywhere, is central both to the problem (wherever I go, there they are) and to the problem’s absurdity, in that this one thoroughly ordinary and, all things considered, truly petty point blinds me from time to time to everything else that this extraordinary woman, my wife, is and does.

Sometime early in our marriage (you’ve learned my now that those five words signal disaster), I dropped the phrase, “finely-tapered calves.” I don’t remember the context, and I only said it once, but it’s become a bitterly scornful catchphrase for just about everything that my wife resents about my problematic attitudes, and she’ll throw it out from time to time, a cluster bomb to remind me that most of what’s wrong with our marriage is what’s wrong with me. And I’m not saying she’s wrong on this point. In fact, my inclination is to say that it’s palliative -- symptomatic of other, weightier ills in the relationship, and that if it weren’t legs, if she had legs like all the other women litanied in this blog, it would be something else. But maybe not. Let’s turn back the clock for a bit of historical perspective.

The first legs that I remember catching my attention belonged to a classmate in 7th grade. We’ll call her Miranda. We went to a private school where girls always wore 2/3-length skirts, so calves were always in view. She was a dancer, her calves slender but not skinny. And I remember that the skin at the front of them over the slight ridge of the tibia was always slightly shiny, probably from lotion or Nair. We became and remained close friends through high school and even into college, having through the years, as she put it, a “series of non-simultaneous crushes on each other.” A few times, we relied on each other as “Sorry, I’ve already been asked” emergency subs when asked by “undesirables” (we were pretty cocky, perhaps cruelly so at times) to dances. After one such dance—our senior dinner dance—we kissed briefly at her doorstep, but pulled back as if on cue, feeling like we were kissing a sibling. I saw her at our recent high school reunion. Still a beautiful face, still witty and astonishingly intelligent, and, despite having gained a lot of weight everywhere else, she still had Killer Kalves.

I believe I’ve mentioned that my wife is tall, nearly 6’1”. From late childhood through adolescence, I remember imputing overconfidence and/or sheer laziness to tall women with flabby legs or even cankles, thinking, as the self-appointed arbiter of All Things Beauty, “She’s relying on her height to distribute and obscure her fat, and doesn’t think she needs to exercise to appear fit and attractive. She’ll learn.” Lingering elements of this attitude may tie to struggles I’ve had, particularly early in our marriage, about the assumption that the man’s to be the provider (see “cosmic injustice”), and that the woman, by virtue of “getting to stay at home all day” is categorically the lazier spouse. I’ve progressed a long way from that position. And anyone who knows my wife will tell you that she’s probably the least lazy person they know.

The next major milestone along Leg Lane was the woman I dated before my mission and almost married afterwards, and whose influence on my life surfaces from time to time throughout this blog. We’ll call her Laurie (I may give her other aliases elsewhere; keeping that consistent would be a logistical hassle, so don’t expect it), and was given the nickname “Laurie Laurie Long Legs” by her high school cross country team. Spectacular legs, not to overshadow the fact that she was also a spectacular woman. But spectacular legs. Upon meeting her, my eldest sister (who has always been quick to observe such things) said, “Those legs…I’m speechless.” While visiting her Orange County home, I saw a box of the latest Nike AirMax on her dresser (they were still fairly new to the market at that time), and whined mildly to her older sister, “Whoa, can you believe [Laurie] spent $110 on a pair of running shoes?!” To which her sister replied, “Have you seen her legs?” Case closed. When we watched Pretty Woman and Vivian (Julia Roberts) tells Edward (Richard Gere), “Did I mention that my leg is 44 inches from hip to toe, so basically we're talking about 88 inches of therapy wrapped around you for the bargain price of three thousand dollars,” Laurie cuddled up behind me, gave me a hug and crossed her legs Indian-style around the front of my waist, and whispered something like, “A little therapy for you, too.” Bliss.

Another one of my sisters (who’s well-versed enough in astrology that we’re all convinced it’s not just a joke or for amusement) attributes my fixation to Jupiter, which “rules the legs” and is also the ruling planet of my sign, Sagittarius. So I could blame it on the stars. Or I could blame it on Darwin: Maybe my seed is best planted with women who can outrun a sabertooth with my babe in her arms.

My wife, whose upper body is strong and lean, may not be genetically predisposed to great legs. For example, I have a photo of her father sitting at the edge of a pool with my daughter when she was a toddler. He’s a fairly fit man—was pretty buff in his younger years, in fact—but his jeans, rolled up to just below the knees, reveal what could best be described as calves that one might associate with a cabbage-picking peasant out on the Russian steppe, looking more like fleshy logs than a human limb with any muscle tone to it. These are half of her genes. She’s told me that working out doesn’t give shapeliness to her legs, that when, for example, she rode a bike for several months around a hilly area in her mission, all she developed where muscles (to the point that once, catching a glimpse of herself, naked, on the way into the shower, she said, “Whoa! Strong-looking legs!”) and not “finely-tapered calves,” to which I, by now interested in something that at least doesn’t jiggle with each step, have responded, “Worse things could happen than you getting really muscular legs.”

In my “frank, outspoken nature” (another Sagittarian attribute/liability that my sister has pointed out to me), I’ve told my wife, more in a spirit of disclosure rather than one of meanness, “Just know that if we’re ever in a room, on a plaza, in a restaurant, in virtually any space that a woman with great legs enters, I’ll notice them. I may not be looking at them directly. I may be fully engaged in whatever is going on. It doesn’t mean I’m thinking about Her vs. You. It doesn’t mean I’m beginning to lust. But I will notice.” This has created fewer tense moments than you might imagine. But one was a year or two ago, a woman with radar-tripping calves walked up to the clothing rental counter at the temple, a good 10 to 15 feet from where we were standing in line. Neither of us turned to look at her directly. But both of us knew she was there. My wife’s mood went immediately cold. As we walked up the stairs to the session a few minutes later, it was not difficult to notice that all the couples ahead of us were holding hands and we were not.

She’s asked me several times, sometimes in a tone of desperation that nearly breaks my heart, “If legs were so important to you, why didn’t you make a point of analyzing mine more before we got married?!” She’s tall, and she jogged before we were married (she hasn’t jogged since), so I made some assumptions. I saw her unclothed legs just once before we were married, when she was getting out of my parents’ hot tub. It was late at night, it was dark, and I was trying to keep my thoughts generally pure (hah!) at that time, so I didn’t get much more than a peripheral glance of a light from inside the house reflecting off of the outside of her wet thigh. Didn’t think much of it. Besides, I was so whooped that nothing short of Jabba the Hutt legs would have been much of a deterrent.

I’ve prayed about this, pleading that God would somehow douse this particular flame, kill this curiosity that’s so damaging to my relationship with my beautiful wife. I used to pray about it a lot. Gave up on it a few years ago. Eventually turned to blogging about it. (Of course, systematically collecting and posting pictures of “impossibly gorgeous women” and “their impossibly long and slender legs” clad in funky/elegant hosiery helps to keep the whole topic out of mind.)