What Do Your Panties Say About You?

Yes, what we wear communicates who we are

My mom was one of those moms who always asked me if I was wearing clean underwear almost every time I left the house. You know the story — if you get into an accident and the EMTs discover your dirty underwear, then everyone will know you had a bad mom.

I never understood why she was more worried about people’s judgment of her as a mother than the fact that I was hypothetically injured badly enough to be in an ambulance. I guess it was all about other people’s perception.

I had no idea back then that what people thought about my panties would become such a driving force in my life — far beyond my mother’s imagined scenarios.

I grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles. Becoming a woman in that culture, during the late eighties made me orient toward certain feminine standards. I wanted long, fake nails, big boobs, blue eye shadow, and sexy underwear.

My mom was amazingly generous in how she dealt with my sprint into young womanhood when I was barely 11 years old. She let me wear blue eye shadow — but only on the weekends around family. She bought me press-on nails — but only the really cheap ones that would fall off after a few hours. The boobs were on their way, as I’m sure she knew, with the racks we have on both sides of my family, and the underwear, she gracefully negotiated.

For my 12th birthday, she bought me a whole set of beautiful, but very tastefully cut panties in pinks, purples, and blues that were made out of a material that felt like silk.

I felt so grown up and beautiful every time I put them on. But I couldn’t deny that I really didn’t like the feel of them. The synthetic material was uncomfortable against my skin and they didn’t “breathe” well. I missed the white cotton panties of my childhood.

All through my teenage years, I tried so hard to make peace with those “fancy” panties. I’d ask my mom for the same style whenever it came time to update my underwear, and I’d walk around feeling uncomfortable, slightly itchy, and, well, damp. I’ve always been on the juicy side, and with those synthetic panties, I perpetually felt wet between my legs. (And not in a good way.)

After my first sexual relationship ended, I indulged in something I’d been dreaming of for years — a pack of simple, cotton panties.

They felt so good when I first put them on, I couldn’t believe it. No itching. No discomfort. And I didn’t feel so wet all day long.

It was divine. Though I remember looking at myself in the mirror one day and thinking: Oh my god. I’m barely 20, I’m wearing granny panties, and I love it.

I wasn’t sure I’d ever have sex again — not unless I found a guy who really got off from all that cotton — but honestly, I was so comfortable, I didn’t care.

I started wondering what my panties said about me once I fully embraced the cotton. I discovered all sorts of things, not just about my fabric preferences, but about cut, as well. I didn’t like high-cut panties or string bikini briefs. And thongs were an absolute no — to this day, I can’t figure out how people think it’s comfortable to have fabric wedged between your ass cheeks.

I liked simple, comfortable cotton panties. I liked having generous coverage over my backside and hips. I liked panties that came up to just below the top of my hip bones, rather than the super low-cut versions. It wasn’t a question of modesty — I just found it more comfortable.

I realized, however, that my underwear preference was generally considered to be un-sexy. Again, the term granny panties comes to mind (though mine aren’t that bad!).

I started keeping two sets of panties throughout my twenties — my sex panties and my day-to-day panties. When I was living in Santa Fe and dating a lot, I pulled out the lacy, string bikini-cut panties when I was preparing for a date that might get frisky. The rest of the time, it was my standard cotton pairs.

False advertising? I suppose that’s a fair accusation. But trust me, those guys barely noticed my panties. They barely noticed me.

I think it’s a far more interesting point that my panties had become a metaphor for who I was as a sexual being: hiding my preferences and needs, enduring discomfort for the pleasure of a man, and basically failing to accept myself for who I was.

When I fell in love with my last partner, I did what so many women do: I headed straight to the store and bought brand new panties. By then, it was pretty easy to find fancy, sexy underwear that was made out of cotton! Hallelujah!

I bought cute green “cheekies” with a lace band at the top, but honestly, most of them were just my usual fare — modestly cut, plain panties in a variety of vivid colors.

I felt beautiful in those panties. My boyfriend was indifferent — the panties were fine, he said, but none of them matched my bras, and he would’ve loved it if I would wear a matching underwear set each day.

I’m sure, as a man, he had no idea how hard it was to find well-fitting bras when you are a DD cup, and he definitely didn’t know how expensive bras were. So no, I assured him, there would be no matching bra and panty sets in my future.

But I did buy a blue thong that I wore on special occasions. He had a real fetish for thongs and it drove him wild to see one peeking out over my jeans. I hated wearing that thing more than I can say — I felt so ugly in it, and it was so incredibly uncomfortable. But I wanted to make him happy, so I’d pull it out from time to time. I learned that the sooner he noticed it, the sooner it would be off my body, so if I strategically bent over at the right time, I wouldn’t have to wear it for long.

But again, I wondered what my panties said about me. Was I less sexy because of the cotton? Or because my panties didn’t match my bras?

Admittedly, I’ve never thought of myself as sexy. I don’t try to be pretty or feminine —because I have better things to do and also because I suspect it’s a futile objective. Mostly, I don’t really care if my cotton panties aren’t sexy.

But there’s something both vaguely worrisome and humorous about how I see myself in my cotton panties. Maybe I’ll never be sexy enough, I sometimes think. Maybe I’m just an 80-year-old in a younger woman’s body.

Or maybe my cotton panties are adorable and that’s all it says about me — maybe I’m just cute and practical and maybe that’s enough.

One day, while visiting my mom when I was 40 and single again, she threw a pair of pants at me and asked me to try them on. They were a gift she wanted to give me for Christmas. (Sometimes, I still feel like a 16-year-old around her, in all the best ways.)

No one else was around, so I whipped off what I was currently wearing and pulled on the new pants.

She gaped at me. “What the hell is going on with your panties?”

“Huh?” I peeked into the waistband of the new pants to try to discern what had drawn her attention.

“There’s a hole in the hip seam and the elastic is fraying around the waistband. They’re disgusting! How old are those?”

I told her they were not even quite a year old. They had just been a really cheap brand and began falling apart after a few washings.

“First of all, I forbid you to wear those again. What if you got into an accident and people saw those? They’ll think you had a horrible mother.”

Yes, seriously, she said that. And yes, I rolled my eyes.

“Secondly, those panties say that you’ve basically given up. What if you met a nice man? You don’t need to dress up for anyone, but for god’s sake, you should have enough self-respect to wear panties that don’t have holes in them.”

Honestly, I had given up. I was devastated when my last relationship ended and facing 40, I figured there was little hope that I would find someone who would love my unembellished, simple, cotton-panty-wearing self. I really didn’t think a man would ever give me a second glance again, let alone get far enough to see my panties. So who cared if they had holes in them?

I couldn’t get her words out of my head, though. I’d often thought so many times that my panties were a reflection of my simplistic, no-frills (and perhaps undesired) sexuality. Now I had succumbed to something even worse — becoming someone so nonsexual that I couldn’t even be bothered to wear a decent pair of underwear.

I felt terrible that I’d been walking around in those ugly, threadbare, cheap, torn-up panties for the past few months. That probably wasn’t a kind way to care for myself. That probably wasn’t respectful.

No, I wasn’t going to replace them with fancy, lacy, synthetic panties. At that point in my life, I knew that was never going to be me. I can’t help it — I need comfortable underwear.

So now I’m stocked up with a collection of nice Jockey panties. Sexy? Probably not. Comfortable? Definitely.

Do they make me happy? Hell yes.

I often think about how our outer world reflects our feelings about ourselves — up to and including our underwear. I don’t want to tell myself (or anyone else) that I don’t care enough about myself to wear a decent, quality pair of underwear. I don’t want to cover such a beautiful part of my body with a piece of fabric that one might consider a rag.

That just won’t do.

Sure, I have one pair of genuinely sad panties that are so comfy, I keep them only to wear on Day 1 of my cycle, when I really need something comfortable, but other than that, I’m committed to keeping a nicer collection of underwear from now on. Not for a future lover, but for me.

It’s okay if my panties give me away as being practical, unpretentious, and far more interested in comfort than in sexiness. But they also need to say that I respect myself — that maybe yes, I’m a simple woman, but I’m deserving. (And, you know, on the prowl.)

Maybe my mom was right and strangers might end up seeing our panties one day. Do you really want to show off a pair that’s ripped and fraying?

You never know — those EMTs might be hot. And available…

© Yael Wolfe 2019