Golden Girdles

Internet, I am not pleased with you. The whole reason I started this blog was to STOP buying things, and yet today I bought this:

It's an amazing vintage chain belt from Etsy seller Made by Cara Closet. (Originally I read this as "Made by Cara's Closet," and I was like, that is one talented closet!) This belt manages to be strange, shiny, pretty, AND long enough to fit around my 44" waist, which means that I had no ability to resist it. Internet, I blame you. Not only did you give me direct access to about a hundred vintage chain belts, but you also made me start thinking about shiny belts in the first place.



Because, you know, the whole Hippolyta's girdle thing. I was going to say something here about the girdle and how it isn't a slimming garment at all, but a sort of belt. Ancient Greek women wore it looped around the waist with straps that crossed the chest, like a proto-bra.



Hippolyta had a golden girdle of this sort, and I assume it had magical powers, because it was a gift from the war god Ares. Aphrodite, the goddess of love, also had a magic golden girdle; if you wore it, anyone who saw you was overcome by desire for you. Aphrodite liked to add to this effect by wearing it with nothing but a drapey cloak, as above.



In Roman wall paintings of Venus, she is also wearing a golden girdle with practically nothing else, although hers looks like a body chain. I was NOT tempted to buy a body chain; ugh. I was tempted to look at a different type of golden belt:



This is what I imagine Aphrodite would wear today. Assuming that she liked bright colors as much as I do, and also that someone would be forcing her to put actual clothes on. I love these 70s disco goddess-style belts, and you can find a ton of them on Etsy for $7-25. Most of them are 30-40 inches long, but are intended to fit a wide range of sizes, depending on how far you want the end to hang down. If you are around my size (or smaller), you could pick up this belt with Napoleon coins and lion heads, or this silver 60s belt , or even this non-vintage but very cute gold chain belt with pink quartz beads.

Some of the smaller belts are so wonderful that I was tempted just to buy some large gold chain and modify them myself, like this coin belt:



Or this wonderful belt with a dangling gold chess piece: sexy and nerdy! The perfect combination.



I do have a green goddess dress similar to the one pictured above, but I'll probably wear my new chain belt with a sweater dress like this:



I'm on the hunt for a similar plum-colored sweater dress. There is this one from Torrid, but I don't know whether I can bring myself to wear a dress with a banded bottom. I think it might make me look like a sad, deflated, plum-colored balloon.



So I will probably end up with something like this sweater dress from Target:



Which will be great for the four chilly days we get here in Florida in the winter. Thanks again, Internet.



By the way -- this is this Hippolyta's girdle. It's not golden, but I do believe that it has magical powers.