Columbia School of Journalism
This piece was for “Opinion Writing” with Nation columnist Amy Wilentz. A post-post feminist perspective on the most annoying undergarment since the whalebone corset.
The Wrongness of Thongs
VALERIE REISS
11/24/2002
The thong is wrong. Many women say thong underwear is comfortable. In fact, they insist that it’s the most comfortable garment they’ve ever worn. As relaxing as the stilettoed, pointy-toed boots they say they could jog in from Bloomies to Barneys and back without breaking a blister.
No. The ladies doth protest too much. Yes, thongs are the most popular undergarment in the country—sales have doubled since 1997 while full panty sales have grown 10 percent, a fashion research group reports. G-strings account for 40 percent of Victoria’s Secret’s panty business; Frederick’s of Hollywood, the company that takes responsibility for mainstreaming the thong, said they sell 75,000 pairs a week. They even recently celebrated the thong’s 20th anniversary by giving away 100,000 thongs. A spokesperson said at the time, “We are in the business of empowering every woman to feel glamorous and desirable in every outfit.”
Empowering? Glamorous? Desirable? Puh-leeze. It’s a strap up your butt. All day long. Women comfortable in thongs are the female equivalent of men who read Playboy for the articles. When I asked several of these women if there was a transition from chafing to comfort, they all said yes. An honest 22-year-old thong-wearer admitted, though: “People say you forget you’re wearing one, but it’s like forgetting you have a rock in your shoe.”
One 29-year-old grad student said she wears thongs when she wants to feel sexy. Many men would applaud her decision. Mike, a 31-year-old hotel manager in Florida, said when a man detects a thong line (See? The visible panty line is not dead. Just smaller and less attractive), he thinks, “Oh shit, she’s wearing a thong…she’s probably wild in bed.”
Other men find them trashy. “That’s stripper shit,” said a 36-year-old SoHo restaurant owner who prefers women in regular white cotton underwear. He said that old-school undies remind him of high school, the attraction being: “The little girl all grown up thing.”
A curly-haired twenty-something waiter added that cool girls don’t wear thongs. “They’re very Upper-East-Side-ish,” he said. “Trying is not sexy. It smacks of desperation.”
It’s comforting to find men who rally for comfortable undies—however fetishistically. But the cliched fashion truth applies: women dress for other women. And especially in New York City, where the fashion girls can be vicious.
When I moved back to Manhattan after years of living where the sky and skivvies are big, I noticed the VPL had been banished. City-girl butts were airbrushed to stony perfection. My bikini-cut Jockeys felt like a parachute; my panty line the Great Wall of China.
At the Silicon Alley fashion dotcom where I was working, a visible panty line was akin to wearing undies over your jeans. So I tried. My first pair were Victoria’s Secret beige cotton. Before it was noon, I went into the last stall of the bathroom with a pair scissors. Snip, snip at each hip. Yank. Toss. Relief.
As my cousin Pam said, “I spend half my time trying to keep stuff out of there.”
Fashion historians say the thong was originally for men. Fast forward past fig leaves and loincloths to posing straps. Around World War II, men slipped into nude-colored pouches to pose for art classes.
Rumor says that Fiorello LaGuardia inspired thongs for women when he told nude dancers at the 1939 World Fair to cover up.
Now that I’ve been living in post-LaGuardia, post-Monica New York City for three years, I am admittedly vulnerable to panty-line neurosis, especially in things like clingy yoga pants. I know I can go bare—and often do—if it worries me so much. But I resent adding to my list of beauty worries, which, thanks to our obsessively PhotoShopped media was not short to begin with, including: exfoliation, hydration and excessive depilation.
Am I wildly dating my 29-year old self when I ask: Does no one remember the hot woman in Annie Hall having her VPL appreciatively ogled at a California cocktail party? Has the sensual appeal of the imperfect been airbrushed away with—an oxymoron—celebrity cellulite?
The cute waiter mentioned above gave me hope—at least for the arrival of a more humane underwear fad: He told me a girl he dated in college wore boy’s tightie-whities. “That was hot,” he said.