The case of the misguided internet purchase...

So I alluded to it in my last post... I gave you a teaser... Darcy strikes again!!!

I can at least console myself with the fact that the only people who know about my most recent - well I don't know what you call it - are myself and my mum and well now I suppose whomever chooses to read my rambling :D

So please, allow me to set the scene:

I, lovely little Darcy sits at my laptop exploring my 'local' online bookstore (local being a relative term as they are in fact based in the UK but have free shipping so work out cheaper in the end). On this particular day I am searching for books on corsetry (I'm making up words again aren't I?) and lingerie making (you know, patterns, pictures, factual stuff) because if I don't have time to make then then I might as well read about making them and try to gain some practical knowlege via osmosis. Make sense to you? Well it did to me and thats all that counts.

Anywho, by chance I stumble upon a book called, well lets just call it "A History of Lingerie" for that is what pertained to be.

Now don't go an ruin the fun already, I know that alarm bells may be ringing for some already but they weren't for me... In my mind was the beautiful book of corsets that I already own that shows close up pictures of all their intricate details and even some instructions and patterns to re-create them... I suppose though you can guess that that was not to be...

In any case below you shall find the books description as listed on my bookstore site...

This is an intimate exploration of the props of our theatre of desire.Since the beginning of civilization, women have worn underwear. Justified as protection, or a hygienic necessity, this "second skin" was devised to satisfy perverse erotic instincts. A "trap laid by Venus" to entertain and stimulate the fantasies of both the woman who wears them and the man who discovers them. Corsets, bras and panties are not utilitarian items - they are elements in a mystic ritual linking man and woman. They act as an obsessive focus for fantasy, for the sex they conceal is powerless without the decorations and seductions which separate us from it. Pleasure would perish without censorship.Women have always known how to stimulate the latent fetishism of the men around them. Under her dress, a Greek girl of the classical period would wear a belt around her hips which was of no practical use except to draw attention to her feminity. Likewise, the women of Rome already wore garters round their thighs, though the stocking had not yet been invented. In our own century, vamps, starlets, pin-ups and models have filled our cinema screens, our advertising hoardings, our office calendars and our imaginations with the erotic engineering of the garter belt and the surreptitious rustle of nylon stockings."Dessous" traces the evolution of this living mythology from its first steps in the dawn of civilization to its apotheosis in the films and advertising campaigns of the modern world. Lavishly illustrated, it demonstrates how the conflict between the need to conceal and the will to reveal has provided women with the means to explore their own sexuality and exercise an erotic ascendancy over men. The result is a richly aphrodisiacal meditation, an intimate exploration of the props of our theatre of desire.

Okay, so obviously it isn't all that completely innocent, some could even say I should have guessed... BUT I DIDN'T I SWEAR I DIDN'T!!! I can not deny that I knew it would be somewhat, how should I put it, risque??? But in all honesty from what I read above I assumed that it would be an essay type thing on the history of stuff mixed with culture of the times etc, a sort of history from the perspective of the fashioable undergarments of the time if you will... and it is... for the first 21 pages worth of introduction... followed by another 550 pages worth of what can really only be described as soft porn.

Yes thats right, (you know I don't think of myself as being particularly prudish but I find myself blushing everytime I think about this book being mailed in an envelope bearing my name and address in bold print, and even more so when I imagine the possibility of my dad stumbling across it in our library and wondering why such a book is inbetween my Harry Potter and Artemis Fowel novels...) I bought one of those books that I probably wouldn't be caught dead looking at in a real store... and I didn't even know it!

Then again, once you get past the poses, breasts and genetalia that is occasionally just out there in the pics, some of the lingerie is really quite nice or pretty or "interesting" - as I of course felt it was my duty to examine properly due to the fact that I did spend my hard earned cash on it and I knew this escapade would end up on the www and well I was trying to proove to myself that I wasn't a prude okay! - But then again some of it is just a bit 'hows it going there' and I think it'll take me a while to desensitise myself enough to venture in again... oh the double entendre's *meep!*

So it is here that I find myself after this whole debacle that is not so much a debacle as me being silly, sitting with a book that I am barely able to look at without blushing let alone read, so I figured the best thing to do would be to let you know about it... what do you think???