An ode to the underwear I bought during Covid
Content warning: The piece discusses intimate subjects including menstruation, underwear, nudity, disordered eating, self-loathing, and shame.
My earliest memory of underwear is from elementary school. Crouched in the shade of a wooden Waldorf play structure, a few classmates and I compared the day’s skivvy choices. Mine were girls cotton briefs with a pale-blue and white checkered pattern, which matched the skort I was wearing. A classmate mocked me for pairing my unders with my outers. I felt defensive, embarrassed, and ashamed.
Shame! You potent elixir of childhood intimacy.
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A handful of years later — now a grown, mature sixth grader — I fumbled in a blurt of attempted humor with these same, carping classmates, and the word “underpanties” fell backward out of my mouth. Instead of laughs, I got awkward stares and sideways glances. At that water fountain around the corner from the girls bathroom, I stood — taller than most of the boys, curvier than all the girls — and wished to cease existing.
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A year later upon the advent of my first period, huddled in a stall of that same girls bathroom, I would hastily shove an excessively large pad into my underwear before playing in a baseball game.
The only girl on the team, I was alone in my embarrassment as I waddled to and from the outfield; my tucked-in team jersey providing no coverage for my lumpy rear end; my male teammates confused by my tearful and hunched base running.
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I remember the arrival of the G-string thong, sometime during seventh grade. From my assigned seat in the back row of the classroom I shared with these same two dozen (give or take) classmates, I had a wide-angle view of everyone’s backsides. Our wooden desk chairs created little peep-show portraits of what I eventually learned was called a “whale tail.”
The early 2000s were a confusing and traumatic time for a sweaty girl with no older siblings.
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I wasn’t allowed to wear thongs, G-string or otherwise.
Or rather, as I did not pay for my own underwear in middle school, I was not allowed to select thongs as my underwear of choice.
My pre-teen and then teenage underwear was primarily purchased from the Jockey store at the Camarillo outlets. Full-coverage. White cotton. In middle school, the briefs were solidly sturdy with thick, indefatigable elastic bands.
Around this time, I developed a preference for the no-show look. Underwear lines on girls stood out to me like food in teeth. Perhaps because I am somewhat obsessive about clean lines and symmetry. Perhaps because of the years of wearing ballet leotards. Perhaps because I learned to cover my eyes in the presence of intimacy.
By high school, I primarily wore a semi-silky, soft cotton Jockey bikini in white, black, and sometimes beige. By high school, I was also in a new peer environment — all-girls, Catholic. We flaunted colorful, cartoonish boxer shorts under our uniform skirts, and bewildered the nuns by sagging our regulation sweatpants in the winter.
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I still have underwear I bought in high school. Cotton thongs, to be specific.
I don’t remember where these faded-blue and grey thongs are from. They don’t (and never did?) have tags on them. They might well be from the Jockey outlet. I might well have stolen them, stuffed into my purse (why did I need a purse in high school?) in the dressing room.
Shame.
I only recently threw away the remaining pairs of my full-coverage Jockey no-line bikini underwear. But I still have the two cotton thongs. They’re my “don’t care” pairs. Good for potentially staining. Bad for feeling good naked.
This isn’t about those thongs.
I didn’t grow up saying the word “butt.” We said — and still only say — “bottom.”
“I need to go to the bathroom.”
Somewhere along the way, my repressed ancestors planted their flags in my frontal lobe and turned off the joy of living below my neck.
Somewhere along the way, my eyes translated the magazines and billboards into a persistent decision that the natural state of my body didn’t deserve to be celebrated.
Somewhere along the way, the underwear ads penetrated my psyche and told me I was too fat.
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Too fat.
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The 2000s were a confusing and traumatic time for a young woman whose body was not found in the pages of a Victoria’s Secret catalogue.
…
What a fucking act of violence.
A recipe for self-loathing
- Three decades of diet culture
- Several years spent sneaking fitness and celebrity gossip magazines
- Any amount of cinema consumption (eye-ball it)
- A deafening dash of Britney, Christina, Spice Girls, and Disney
- One pair of wide hips
- A discovery of the word “voluptuous” at age 12 while wearing a bathing suit at the beach
- Centuries of Catholic guilt and Protestant shame (to taste)
- One notion that one’s knees are hideously misshapen
- As many underwear catalogues as can arrive in the mail
Combine all ingredients in one perfectly healthy body. Bake at broiling until no self-love remains. Remove and let sit until you can’t take it anymore.
Throughout college and into early adulthood, my underwear was either forgettably utilitarian (you know the pairs: stained, ripped, dyed an accidental beige/grey, threadbare), or a costume — part of a performance for someone else; meant for a privately shared photo; paired with a lacy black thigh-high stocking. An adrenaline-fueled secret. Exciting, but with the constant caveat of an obsession with my body’s lines. Sure, sexy was a state of mind — so long as the mind had a certain body.
In my mid-twenties, I experienced the tragic power of extreme weight loss. I finally looked like the ideal that had been seared into my brain so long ago.
A well-intentioned male TV producer consoled me after a breakup, the result of which was the dramatic weight loss. “You’re so much better off. Look at you — you’re hot now.”
I exercised for fear of flab.
I ate with the precision of a ticker tape — counting, measuring, comparing.
I fed on the high of being less.
I don’t remember what kind of underwear I bought, if any, during this time.
The shift began with Thinx. August, 2019.
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In preparation for a camping trip I knew would overlap with my predictably heavy period, I succumbed to the Instagram ads that boasted five-star reviews of people somehow feeling sexy as they bled.
The premise of generating less landfill waste also appealed. A few months later I would buy my first menstrual cup. But more eye-catching than the glowing underwear reviews were the underwear ads themselves.
Folds. Softness. Cellulite. Unapologetic size.
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With the camping trip arriving sooner than standard shipping would accommodate, I drove two hours round-trip to purchase the period underwear from a boutique shop in San Francisco. There was no trying the underwear on, so I selected a few pairs in various sizes. Thinx sold no fun colors at this time, but I was still primarily focused on functionality.
They served their purpose.
More importantly, I felt a little less at war with my body. More importantly, I felt a little like we were beginning to collaborate.
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A few months later, I decided to give Thinx’s competitor Knix a try, as Knix offered a wider ranger of appealing colors, and I had quickly realized menstruation of my intensity would require several pairs of menstrual underwear anyway. An investment in my monthly mortality.
Combined with my new (Flex) cup, I was now spending considerable time holding my own blood in my hands. It was draining, but quietly rebellious.
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The shift moved into a higher gear with high-waisted MeUndies. Late 2019.
Known for their bright collections, bold prints, and soft fabrics that feel “like a cloud giving you a straight-up bear hug,” MeUndies had been in my life for a few years by December 2019, the result of my partner getting a discount code from a comedy podcast. We had purchased a matching pair of boy short briefs, which were indeed very soft, but the cut felt less like a bear hug and more like a too-tight handshake on my stomach. The previously-lost weight had returned with time, as is known to happen when a long-term relationship settles in to familiarity.
In 2019, MeUndies released their FeelFree High-Waisted Cheeky cut. With a feather-light band that sits above the belly button, the style reminded me of a bathing suit bottom I liked. Supportive. Coverage. Smooth.
I ordered a pair in “Goblin Blue.”
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Knix began selling high-waisted lace-backed period underwear, and I began tracking their ads and site for sales.
Thinx released a super-absorbency pair of their high-waisted style (my favorite), which allowed me to mostly sleep though the heaviest nights.
I bought more pairs of FeelFree MeUndies—in Cabernet, GeoStripe, and Flying Colors (tie-dyed), which I wore occasionally when lounging in private.
And then the first Covid case was announced in Santa Clara County, and we all locked our doors.
For the last calendar year, the only clothing I’ve bought is socks (for rollerskating — that’s another story) and underwear.
No shirts or dresses. No pants, leggings, or sweaters. Just some socks.
And mostly underwear.
I was not one of those who (in my WFH privilege) got dressed every day from head to toe in an effort to stay motivated and professional. If you had a Zoom meeting with me in the last year, there’s more than a good chance you had me pants-less, seated cross-legged at my table clothed offscreen in only a pair of high-waisted underwear.
I also stopped exercising as often.
I used to reserve self-love for the days when I could suck my stomach in to flatness.
I once refused, during a somatic therapy session, to look at myself in a mirror without holding everything in and up, the ten-plus years of dance training louder in my head than any possibility of unconditionally loving my body.
But at some point, a few weeks or months into the isolation of shelter-in-place, I stopped pushing myself to push myself every day.
I considered my day a success if I managed a walk around the block.
I did yoga, occasionally, because I felt naturally inclined to stay flexible.
I did yoga, occasionally, because it helped me feel strong in a quiet way — unlike the aggressive strength of the punitively-loud group exercise classes I used to force upon myself.
I rode my bike to feel wind in my face.
I started rollerskating again, by myself, in empty parking lots and abandoned basketball courts. Not for fear of how I’d look otherwise, but because skating is dancing.
I danced in the dark. With myself. For myself.
I bought more underwear.
I bought Parade underwear. Colorful, patterned, soft, silky, lacy, mesh.
I wore it for myself, seeing my natural shape in the myriad bodies of their ads.
I wore it for myself, playing with how the various styles gently held my folds.
I wear it for myself, finding gratitude in the flesh that has kept me alive.
Softer, rested, fed. Fatter.
I’m ashamed that it took surviving a deadly global virus that has killed nearly four million human beings including my aunt for me to arrive at acceptance, appreciation, and dare I say enjoyment of my body as it is.
A few months ago, a display in the women’s clothing section of Target stopped me in my tracks during a routine trip for deodorant and Q-tips.
Up on the wall, prominently displayed above the bathing suits, was a photo featuring two female models in bikinis. In the photo, the women stand a foot or so apart. One of the models — a young woman with a body like mine — rests her right temple on the other’s shoulder, creating a connective bridge between the two figures. She’s smiling. Her stomach folds over itself, the tucks and flesh of her belly unrestricted, her colorful bikini a parenthesis around her thickly-dimpled torso. She looks straight into the camera, relaxed.
I stood there, agape, and said a silent prayer for every Target dressing room I cried in as a young girl.
Capitalism will forever perpetrate spiritual and corporeal violence, but I am grateful it has decided to diversify its imagery.
I still feel disappointment sometimes when thinking about my weight.
I still have moments when I consider
behavior changes not for health, but for shape.
But my hatred of my body is so much less potent. The unhappy thoughts leave me sooner rather than later.
I quietly allow for joy, pleasure, and comfort, instead of defaulting to restriction, punishment, and judgment.
As I stand, dance, rest, and live in my soft, colorful underwear, I am not sure I have reached unconditional self-love, but I have loosened my white-knuckled grip on self-loathing.
A recipe for self-loving
- Full glasses of water, often
- At least eight hours of sleep, when possible
- 10 deep breaths when feeling anxious
- 1–100 pieces of sushi (or your preferred comfort food) when sad
- 1–100 pieces of sushi (or your preferred comfort food) when happy
- A generous heap of hugs
- 30 minutes of dancing as-needed
- A splash of sun on skin
- Hot water shower zest
- Some combination of good friends and good dogs
- At least a few pairs of fun underwear (to taste)
Combine all ingredients in one perfectly healthy body.
Enjoy.
