Before pantyhose there were stockings.

I was 8 years old when I started working for my father in his ladies’ shop. The best selling items in our store in 1953 were nylon stockings. They matched every skin tone and you could buy them seamed or seamless, with toe stitching or toeless, with a heel or without. If her foot had particularly pointy nails, she could ask for a reinforced toe. Nurses, teachers and women who were on their feet all day would ask for extra padding or reinforced heel to prevent wearing them out prematurely.

The seamed nylons were stitched in dozens of choices: plain, zigzag, or other fancy design. Equally interesting were the tops of the stockings; one could choose a plain top, embroidered, or sexy laced to entice that special guy. The tops of stockings had to have a heavier dernier (or weave count) than the leg portion to support the clips from the garter belt.

Stockings came plain, mesh, cotton, wool, Lycra, and fishnet. Ankle-high, calf-high, knee-high and thigh-highs, we had them all.

The problem with plain nylons is that they would run, or tear along the grain. Some of my readers may recall seeing their mothers dab the tear in their stockings with clear nail polish to stem the run. White cotton stockings were popular with the nurses since they could not use nylon in rooms with oxygen. Older women from Poland and Ukraine bought wool stockings exclusively.

For diabetics or those suffering from varicose veins support hose or compression stockings fit the bill. Women could ask for heavy, sheer, or very sheer derniers. After a few years of selling stockings I was able to dispense advice on how to reduce blisters for women who were ordering the wrong type of stocking for their activity or whether the occasion called for plain or mesh stockings or no heel and toe for Cuban heeled shoes. Just by looking at a woman's body shape I would suggest that she buy and change to a little larger size stocking later in the day as her feet got bigger.

When I was ten (1955) the film Rebel Without a Cause was released and very soon after anklets or ankle-hi socks (to wear with jeans) became very popular with teenagers.

In 1957, tights were a big seller and they came in even more designs and colors than stockings. What a headache keeping enough of them in stock.

By the time I was 16 I was a stocking guru.

Turning Grey Into 50 Shades

Now you may be wondering how many different kinds of stockings a typical store back then had to carry. Well, we start off with hundreds of possibilities in a dozen or more sizes from 4 to 11 in half size increments; we then multiply the 40 or more shades times all the various combinations, and we calculate that we would need 10,000 stockings to cover every woman's size, shape and shade requirements. But we had a small store and so my father had to make do with only 11 shades: White, off-white, sand, beige, tan, brown, light taupe, dark taupe, light grey, dark grey, black. There was an exception for certain sizes that we would have blue, red, green, yellow, orange, and purple for holiday occasions, and one could always make a special order.

But the big department stores carried hundreds of shades: from the light pink of Irish girls to the dark coffee of some of our negro customers (yes, that was before we called them blacks). My father taught me that women need to be able to choose from over a thousand shades in order to decide to buy something. If you only showed them one shade of beige you were dead in terms of selling them. So how to make 11 colors stretch to cover more than 40 manufactured shades? Here's how:

In 1953 stockings came individually wrapped in paper, three to a box. A typical customer would come in and ask to see a pair of stockings, let's say, size 7½, light beige. Note that they said they would like to see, not that they want to buy. Men would come in and say, "I would to buy a pair of black socks size 11, thank you" - and be done. But women? In actual fact, it is impossible to truthfully match the correct shade of stocking to every woman's leg coloring. So we used the power of suggestion. I would bring out a box of beige stockings, remove the band holding the three pairs, open the paper covering of one pair, and stick my hand a few inches past the top into the leg portion to show the woman how the shade looked on my skin tone.

We did not allow women to put their hands into the stockings to prevent accidental tearing or catching of their nails on stockings they had not yet purchased. There were sanitary reasons as well. Now it was rare that my skin tone would exactly match that of the customer, so this was only to give her the general idea of the shade. If she asked for a lighter shade of beige, I would put that pair back into the box, and put the box away, and bring out another box with the exact same shade. Same drill, take out the stocking and put my hand in. This time I would discreetly pull the stocking a bit tighter on my skin making the shade appear lighter and saying this was light beige. Usually this power of suggestion did the trick and the customer would get home and put the stockings on and be perfectly happy. Really ladies, all these micro-shade choices are unnecessary.

Deception as a Selling Technique

But, you may protest, you didn't give her a lighter shade of beige, suppose she really wanted it much lighter? Well, if the first iteration of this technique didn't satisfy her, I would bring out sand which was very light beige. If she said this was too light, I would bring out another box of exactly the same shade of sand and say that it was little darker and almost always this would work. So although she was really only choosing one or two different shades, as far as the customer was concerned she was making a selection from among four or five different shades of beige. This also worked well with off-white stockings which I pitched as eggshell, cream, off-white, near-white, or whatever the customer was looking for. The only shades for which this game was not necessary were black or white stockings, although I did have some customers asking for very black, which of course was the same as black but I just called it deep black. If the customer said she wanted a still darker black, I brought out a shade I called coal pitch, which always did the trick, but it was always the one shade of black that we always carried. Everything is in the name.

I know what you are thinking. I was being deceptive, these customers were only fooled into thinking they had a large selection of shades to choose from. I admit it. It was a deception. But no one was dissatisfied. In fact, if I did not deceive them, they would have either not made the purchase (and how is that doing the customer a favor?) or if they did make the purchase they would have felt ill at ease that they merely settled for a shade and did not get exactly what they were looking for. How is making the customer feel unsatisfied with their purchase good for the customer?

Presentation Changes the Perception of Taste

The same applies to all other businesses - steaks, salads, and especially desserts will satisfy you more if presented with sizzle and panache. It's all in the presentation. Is that deceptive? Of course. To be truthful they could just as easily and cheaply put the steak on a paper plate and give you a plastic fork to eat it with, it's only food for god's sake. But making you think you are getting something different and special is what you are really paying for.

No one ever came back and said, "Hey, this is the same ferkakta shade you showed me originally." We sold more stockings than anyone else in Bayonne.

And by the way, we did have a sign that said "Satisfaction Guaranteed" but fortunately Roy L. Pearson Jr never sued us.

Liberals Need to Believe in Anti-Capitalist Lies

As to the title: The Nylon Deception and Liberal Conspiracies. One of the reasons that liberals believe in Global Warming and that the destruction of the World Trade Center was planned by our government and that Bush lied about WMD's is that liberals need to have a large selection of conspiracies in order to live their desperate, pathetic, unpatriotic lives. All one needs to do is suggest a government conspiracy on any topic and as long as it attacks this country's ideals, or demeans Capitalism, they are happy. They do not care that they were sold a bill of goods.

Earlier today I heard a caller to the Bob Brinker Show MoneyTalk make the allegation that the US invaded Iraq because back in 2000 Saddam Hussein wanted the Euro to replace dollars as the sole currency for oil payments. Here's that Conspiracy:

Ratical.org,
Revisited - The Real Reasons for the Upcoming War With Iraq:

Although completely unreported by the U.S. media and government, the answer to the Iraq enigma is simple yet shocking -- it is in large part an oil currency war. One of the core reasons for this upcoming war is this administration's goal of preventing further Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) momentum towards the euro as an oil transaction currency standard. However, in order to pre-empt OPEC, they need to gain geo-strategic control of Iraq along with its 2nd largest proven oil reserves.

Bob Brinker, with 25 years of monetary experience called such an allegation ludicrous.

Here's an instructive article on liberals and conspiracy theories (although the author does say that Conservatives are also prone to conspiracy theories of their own):

Sixteen Stones, 19 Apr 2007,
Conspiracy Theories

Liberal Hollywood visions and musical prognostications of a looming Christian theocracy, corporate oligarchy, or suggestions that President Bush orchestrated the September 11th attacks and the war on terror in a plot to set himself up as some kind of Hitler-like dictator clearly fall into this kind of thinking. If you talk to people who believe these theories, you will probably find it difficult to answer their contracted logic, which is often untempered by humor, charity, or common sense.