I know I've been talking about "giving it up" the past couple days, but oh well. I was out and about today, and decided to do a little experiment. I figure the response to male presence in a traditionally female-only location of a store is more accepted this time of year, so I figured I'd give it a shot.
I entered the mall at JC Penney's, and headed straight for the lingerie department. Nobody, aside from a youngish SA, was in there. She really didn't seem to mind me being there, and even asked how I was doing. I didn't buy anything, but looked extensively through what was available. In particular, I was looking for a racerback bra, but thought I'd check out the rest of the racks, just to see what they had. Either I am blind or they didn't have any racerbacks, so I decided to head on down to the next store.
Where else would I end up but Victoria's Secret. I kinda slinked in through the front door, and off to one of the side-rooms. I looked the walls and tables over and saw no racerbacks, so I headed back to where there were SA's and customers. There was one guy in there, and he would pass for a CD'er far before I would. He looked at me, gave me the nod, and affixed his sights on the SA right away. Nobody said a word to me in there, and I was fully expecting to be hovered over by a SA. The closest I found to a racerback was the same cotton bra, only in a normal back-close. I looked around a little more then left, again empty-handed.
Next, to Macy's. I found it hard to believe how big the store was and that they would tuck the "Intimates" department clear in a side room, far away from the women's clothing section. At any rate, I found one racerback in the entire selection there, and it was being heavily guarded by a rough old woman. I didn't feel like asking her to move, and it would have been kinda obvious that it wasn't so much a Christmas present due to the fact that it was plain white and not the traditional flamboyant colors and such that a gift normally would be. I left the store empty-handed and with a really bad taste in my mouth. Not only did that one customer ruin the experience, the SA's in EVERY department were staring me down like I was going to shoplift.
I decided I'd had enough of the mall and went to Wal-Mart. I had high hopes that they'd have a racerback bra there, but they didn't. I almost bought a longline, because those too have intrigued me for a long while, but decided not to. I ended up heading back to the sporting goods and looked at gun cleaning supplies instead.
So all in all, nothing special happened. I do know that my personal attitude towards it has changed tremendously since my first bra purchase, as this time I didn't feel like I wanted to vomit afterwards. It's also very interesting to see the expressions on peoples' faces when a guy walks into the bra and panty section and starts flipping through the clearance rack. :devil:
The result of the experiment is this: Christmas has nothing to do with it. People still don't think it's right for a man to buy women's clothing. I don't get it though, because I also checked out the mens sections, and there were women in there picking and sorting and acting like nobody cared...because nobody did!
