The SFBG’s Laura Peach helps her roomie take the fear out of shopping for sexy underthings.
A few weeks back, my roommate Gina and I sat in our living room, chatting about life and drinking cheap red wine as had become our custom since we’d both broken up with our significant other, when she dropped the bomb: she had never been lingerie shopping.
I was aghast.
She named off her reasons: She was a tom boy at her core and didn’t know how to buy things like that. She was trying to live fairly simply and could certainly get by fine without lingerie. And most of all, she was simply too intimidated and afraid to go lingerie shopping.
“Oh Gina, you don’t even know what you’re missing,” I said. I vowed to take her out.
It was a while before we could find a time when our schedules coincided. When we finally set out on a drizzly Monday morning, I wouldn’t let anything — not mising keys, a flat tire, or a forgotten credit card — get in our way.
We started with Haight Street’s best vintage and modern underthing outpost, Dollhouse Bettie . Gina was wide-eyed and nervous at first, but then became seduced by a purple babydoll slip. Soon her ooohhh’s and aaahhh’s and light fingertips on corners of fabric gave way to pulling hangers off the rack, and before she knew it, Gina had a dressing room stocked full of lingerie.
Photo from Dollhouse Bettie.