This little piggy went to market

So I was at Trader Joes, and what did I see?  A youngish woman wearing white gloves.  They were the kind of ladies gloves that were already obsolete in 1970, when I was five, but which I remember having to wear anyway on dressy occasions.  The gloves were thin and fine, most likely silk or some silk/polyester blend.  They were very pretty, and they were clearly not intended to be a fashion statement.  They were intended to be a vigilance statement.  These were the gloves that said: "No swine flu for me!"

I understand that sentiment.  I myself am the type of person who takes care to wash my hands whenever I come home from anywhere.  I have been known to pull my own pen out of my purse to sign credit card slips and thus avoid using the communal pens lying around shops.  And would it surprise you to learn that I floss my teeth, every night, and that I've never had a cavity?

The point is, I understand wariness.  I understand and try to abide by the keys to good health.  But how tragic it will be to discover, at some later date, that women threw off the shackles of patriarchal, WASPish fashion (corsets, white gloves, veiled hats, and floor length dresses) only to be thrown again under the bus of hot, sweaty gloves because of swine flu.  

Don't go there people.  Resist the urge.  Wave your pretty little digits in the April sky.  Wave them high. Wave them low.  And, at the top of the lungs, shout "No.  White.  Gloves.  NEVER AGAIN!"*

*Note: You do have my permission to wear gloves of all types in inclement weather and even white gloves if you are dressing up like Veronica Lake, Audrey Hepburn, or Gypsy Rose Lee, or if you somehow think that white gloves will improve your romantic prospects.  But only then.