Pet Peeve: Leg Tourniquet Socks

Says the website: "Learn about
the symptoms, causes and treatment of
sock-line hyperpigmentation,
a health issue caused by
tight socks with elastic bands.

I understand there is something chic about being dressed up and crossing your legs to reveal ankle and a little leg under one's trousers, naked skin and hair perfectly covered by smooth gentleman's socks held up against gravity and nature by bands of elastic.

Mind you, most of the year, if I do wear socks, they are the kind that don't reach the ankle bone. These short anklets, something I never had occasion to wear in Lower Alaska, don't provoke my peeve. But then, they really are not a gentleman's sock. They are more a sports sock and are related to the full sized, thick, white cotton crew or gym socks. You can readily get crew socks without overly constrictive elastic.

Summer uniform.

My school in Sydney, St. Aloysius College (may Allah bless the Jesuit priests), had a dress code. We wore uniforms. Grade school students wore shorts. The winter uniform was grey wool shorts and blazer. Summer was khaki cotton. Heaven help the kid who lost track of the seasonal change and showed up dressed in the wrong fabric. Regardless of the season, we had to wear grey shin socks pulled up taught to just below the knee. They had to be smoothly taught. A wrinkled mess of grey sock crumpled around the ankles was likely to earn a couple of hits on the palms with a thick leather strap.

We kept our socks hoisted using rubber bands, like the kind that bind asparagus, only a little thinner and more circumference. Like cuff links and tie clips to a gentleman of the 1960's, the rubber bands were a critical element of school dress.

Socks could not sag. Each morning we pulled a sock on, followed by a rubber band which we artfully hid by folding over the sock top. Kids with higher social status dress had newer socks with elastic collars woven into the fabric. My socks were so worn the original elastic had long since lost its vim and vigor.

The price of such uniform neatness was a deep concave ring around the flesh of one's calves. At my age, I don't really care whether my dark blue or brown socks slump in wrinkles around my ankles. I do care about deep concave rings around the flesh of my legs.

I refuse to wear suspenders.

You would think that at least some manufacturers of gentleman's socks would produce a style that didn't function as a tourniquet, but I defy you to find one. It's just a matter of how ridiculously constrictive they are. Even some athletic socks have lots of sadistically tight elastic woven into their tops. I know. I ended up buying several pairs.

What I do in my frustrated anger is to pull apart the sock tops as hard as I can to stretch and hopefully break the elastic. The elastic is way tougher than my pull, an indication of just how constrictive these gentleman's tourniquets can be. I have taken scissors to socks, making strategic cross-snips designed to sever at least some of the thick elastic tendons. It helps a little. The best solution is chance and wear: chance that a particular sock uses inferior elastic, and wearing and washing it enough that the sock sags. In drawers full of dozens of pairs of dress socks, only two pair have achieved perfection.

My solution, hardly perfect but quite practical, is to fold the top of the sock down to the narrowest part of my ankles.

Why are all dress socks, I do not exaggerate, all dress socks made with elastic so tight you can count the threads by the impressions they leave in your flesh? I don't get it. Thank goodness I work in a home office and a desert environment with not much need or occasion to wear dress socks.