There was a dark time in the 1980s when pantyhose mania struck the nation. We’d just learned that apparently we have a climate? And that climate might be changing? The nation reacted to this traumatic news in the most ’80s way possible. They made horrific pantyhose goblins:
I don’t know why this frightful era of pantyhose crafting befell humanity, but it might be our darkest period since the Crusades. Pantyhose are underwear. We’re all on the same page about that, right? They’re sold in the underwear section. They come into direct, intimate contact with feet, butts, genitals, and thighs. Sure, people could sacrifice new pantyhose to the pantyhose golems, but they weren’t doing that. Pantyhose are fragile garments; women had to wear them every day until we won our God-given right to rock jeggings, and they had so, so many extra pairs of pantyhose they were desperate to get rid of… desperate enough to do anything. From that desperation, a book was born:
Sara Lavieri Hunter is Marie Condo’s Antipope. She claims to be a home organization guru. She’s written other books like 10 Minute Tiny Home: Hundreds Of Easy Tips To Straighten And Clean Every Room In Your House, and 10 Minute Organizing: 400 Fabulous Tips To Organize Every Room Of Your House – In Spite Of Your Family. With each one, she tweaked her name a little to Sara L. Hunter, and then Sara Hunter, almost as if there was something she wanted to distance her name from, some shameful past secret like, I don’t know, the fact that her book on how to reuse pantyhose has a full section on cooking with used pantyhose!
Apparently, Sara never worked in a kitchen and saw those horrifying food safety videos about the dangers of using underwear as a juice strainer. In this chapter, there are so many ways that pantyhose comes into direct contact with food that I may look with suspicion at every meal I eat for the rest of my life. This book suggests you season your food with pantyhose!
Put raw chicken in the foot of your old pantyhose and fill that bad boy up with breadcrumbs. Yes, the bread crumbs will fall out everywhere, covering your kitchen with salmonella and foot germs, but if you do it over a baking dish, it won’t be that messy. Then why not just use the baking dish? Removing the pantyhose makes this tip five times less messy and ninety-six percent more sanitary!
Since there are nowhere near 500 acceptable ways to use pantyhose in the kitchen—in fact, I would say there are 0 ways—this chapter utilizes the same one tip thirteen separate times. Number 41 is to use pantyhose to store lettuce, which almost counts as a useful tip because storing lettuce in plastic does make it wilt faster, so storing it in something other than plastic is mostly a good idea. Sara tasted that brief flash of genuine helpfulness and decided she couldn’t get enough of it.
Tip number 59: Store parsley, 61: Store carrots, 62: Store hot cocoa packets, 63: Store apples, 64: Store potatoes, 66: Store lemons and limes, 67: Store tea bags… basically, in this woman’s kitchen it’s impossible to escape eating something that has touched hosiery. Not even the birthday cake is safe.
Let’s think about this for a second. You can use pantyhose as a juice strainer because it’s full of tiny holes. Why would something full of tiny holes work as a pastry bag? This tip will leave your hands covered in frosting and leg sweat. Are we cooking for a pervert, Sara? Oh, we are? We have been this whole time? Well, then your book makes a lot more sense, Sara!
I’m sure right now you’re asking yourself how you can avoid pantyhose freaks. Don’t worry; there are signs of this affliction, and they are not at all difficult to miss. These people are not hiding their problems. They may even openly wrap your prepared food in pantyhose and gift it to you.
This is a good way to figure out if you are leg worthy to the pantyhose lunatic in your life. If they give you the foot, know that you’re a lesser friend and someone out there got a whole leg of cookies. And I know it’s gauche to bring up money while stuffing cookies into pantyhose, but have pantyhose ever been less expensive than plastic bags? This is all very suspicious.
Stunning is definitely the perfect descriptor for this gift. I would be stunned if I got pantyhose wine anywhere but prison. Another warning sign of a pantyhose kitchen is of course, repurposed pantyhose clothing.
Yes, if people see a woman in a tube top, they will think that’s crazy, but if you sew pantyhose to that tube top, they’ll say, “There goes the most normal woman I ever saw with pantyhose slung over her shoulders.” It’s not just the clothing that can give away the pantyhose-obsessed. Look closely at their hair, and you may notice something amiss.
Remember to check a mirror! It’s the one step of building a human head out of pantyhose most people forget!
I respect a book that makes sure tip number 420 is insane. Sure, why not? Make a wig out of pantyhose. No one is going to stop you. We have free will, and we’re using it for pantyhose wigs. In fact, you can artificially enhance yourself with pantyhose in any way you see fit.
No part of the human body is safe from the pantyhose. No profession is safe from the pantyhose. There might be used pantyhose in your children’s school.
An A for effort and an F from the health department. The way this book involves children in the pantyhose is even more disturbing than the way it involves cake in the pantyhose. It does acknowledge that letting kids hang out with a cloth rope is generally a bad idea because every baby’s hobby is trying to die, but it’s also like, eh, it’s probably fine, right?
You’ll want your strip long enough they can’t swallow it but short enough they can’t wrap it around their neck. A foot? Half a shin? Whatever, you’re a pantyhose maniac, you’ll figure it out. Babies are supposed to be tough. Sometimes, they should eat a little bit of pacifier dirt. As long as it gives you a way to display your old pantyhose that baby can munch on a dirty pacifier all day.
The book does acknowledge that if you are this invested in getting rid of your old pantyhose, you might also be dumb enough to suffocate your child by sewing a Halloween costume without air holes. I have to appreciate a product that understands its audience on this level.
You might think after 400 or so incredible pantyhose crimes, the advice in this book would start to get a little thin, but you would be wrong. The most amazing advice in this book comes in the last few entries. The versatility of pantyhose really didn’t come through for me until the final tips which display the wide range of pantyhose uses. Who would have ever thought you could wipe your ass and bread chicken with the exact same thing?
Then if that wasn’t enough versatility for you, you can use that very same toilet paper material as an eternal bond with your soulmate! (Preferably white pantyhose for proposing, black or brown for poop).
Wow, this book really did it. They made pantyhose come into contact with every conceivable hole in the human body. They even found a way for pantyhose to touch your heart. To combat the evil released by this book, I will be releasing a competing novel called Exactly One Thing You Should Do With Pantyhose After You Have Worn Them. It will be short and succinct, maybe a picture book. No children will be sacrificed to pantyhose in the making of my book. I doubt the author of 500 Pantyhose Curses I Have Personally Enacted can say the same.
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