Photo Credit: ItsMeAndYou.com
If you’ve gone shopping for underwear recently, odds are you’ve noticed a new trend toward higher waistlines, lower leg cuts, and a great deal more fabric on the rear view. It seems that skimpy is out, and Grandma’s Fruit of the Loom value pack is in. What’s behind the ultra high-rise of the good old cotton granny panty?
Let’s start by pointing out the obvious: thongs are not comfortable. Sure, women say they don’t mind wearing them, but getting used to light-on-the-textile underwear is a far cry from actual comfort. In the same way that we’ve become convinced that jeans are somehow comfort clothing (they’re not), or that stiletto heels are fine for walking to work (oh, please), we’ve been told that a thin strip of fabric creeping up our backside is a perfectly acceptable sensation. But none of us are fooled, are we?
And thongs are some of the least terrible offenders when it comes to the underwear we’ve subjected ourselves to. Many of us spent the past decade sausage-casing our way into Spanx — garments that were harder to get into than most Ivy League schools — simply because we were afraid that someone might spot an all-too-human bulge on our anatomies.
It seems that women have finally had enough with suffering for the sake of a smoother behind. But comfort isn’t the only thing fueling the fire of this new trend toward more coverage that’s less concerned about appealing to the male gaze. If design house Me and You and its wildly popular “Feminist” undies are any indication, we’re experiencing a tidal shift, not only in style but in attitudes toward feeling good in our own skin. Big, high-waisted, cotton — these are panties that prioritize accommodating women’s actual bodies, in their many varieties, over blatant sex appeal. And their “Feminist” labeling suggests that the woman wearing these underpants has an identity and purpose inherent in her mind, beliefs, and values, and not whether she’s showing some visible panty line through her trousers.
For years now, women have been pushing back against beauty standards that are unrealistic at best, and damaging at worst. Yet all the while, some of us (myself included) have secretly or not-so-secretly continued to flip through the glossy pages of fashion magazines while worrying that we’re not living up to those standards. Maybe we are, after all this time, finally internalizing what we’ve been telling ourselves: our right to feel good about ourselves isn’t dictated by our clothes.
Maybe if the thong or body shaper were the undies of fear — fear that we weren’t pretty or sexy enough at any given moment of the day — then granny panties represent the freedom to feel great about our bodies and ourselves without festooning ourselves with lace and Lycra under our clothes on a daily basis.
To that, I say, “Welcome back, Granny.”