Forget tattoos. My middle-aged act of rebellion is going to be two diagonal ridges across my butt.
I am so tired of thinking about my panty line.
I hit my breaking point the other day as I pulled leggings on for a walk across town. They came out of the dryer extra-tight and dragged up my legs, which bunched my undies around the top of the leg holes. I had to stand in front of my bedroom mirror for a solid minute with my hand down my pants, craning my neck to look at my backside, adjusting everything to lay perfectly flat to give the illusion that I wasn’t wearing underwear.
But I do, in fact, wear underwear. According to polls I found online and a casual query of my friends, most other women do too.
So if we’re all mostly doing it, why do we try so hard to appear like we’re not? When did it become socially unacceptable to appear to wear underwear?
By the looks of the $88-billion global underwear industry and the encyclopedic options for the appearance of an uninterrupted butt cheek, most women carry a heavy mental load about their panty line. I could solve the climate crisis with all the time and money I’ve devoted to finding the pair I wear most. They’re called “Invisible Edge Bikini Underwear” by Auden at Target, and I grab them by the fistful because they’ve been discontinued before and I have PTSD about having to hunt down a new style I don’t hate.
Because let’s be clear: That’s the criteria I’m working with. I just want something I don’t hate. And by that I mean something that a) doesn’t reveal the dreaded line through my jeans or b) go up my butt.
That’s right, G-string-slingers. I don’t do thongs. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Up until college I wore Fruit of the Loom cotton briefs under every outfit, and I recall no instance of being aware (or being made aware) of my panty line. Between classes, homework, boyfriends, and my first job, I didn’t have the brain space for hiding my undergarments. I consider these the good old days.
The first time I encountered a thong I was a freshman in college, feeling horribly dowdy beside every other girl there. One wealthy and fashionable friend took it upon herself to outfit me for a party, including slender trousers and a delicate little lace thong. Through the whole party the thong’s presence occupied, at minimum, 30 percent of my attention.
Did I hate the distraction? Yes. Did I also very much enjoy the reflection of my line-less butt through those trousers in the mirror? God, yes. Wearing a thong existed in the same realm as tweezing my eyebrows and teetering on high heels, where discomfort paid incredible dividends. Running my fingers surreptitiously over my suddenly smooth backside, it felt like my ass had graduated. To keep the degree, all I had to do was accept that my crack would never not be top-of-mind.
Little by little, my dresser filled with thongs; as a young professional, I wore them beneath everything. But when I came home from work each night, after fighting the urge to extract something from my backside all day, I craved basic cotton briefs the way other people crave a cold beer. Flinging my thong into the hamper and sliding into the unapologetically elasticized underwear of my youth felt safe. Thongs were so performative and demanding; briefs asked only to hold me.
Then I had kids. Childbirth changes so much about a woman: her shoe size, her palate, her priorities. I lost my tolerance for thongs. I just couldn’t pretend not to notice something up my butt anymore, not when the babies required every shred of my attention and I lived on three hours’ sleep every day.
Thus began the hunt for unhateable-yet-invisible undies. I spent a fortune trying specialty brands that promised to stay put and disappear under clothes, but they never delivered. The Target ones land closest to the sweet spot of affordability and accessibility, but they have drawbacks. As I mentioned, they still inch up and require a pat-down under pants. Plus—and this is almost too inconsequential to note—they’re impossibly clingy from the dryer. Once, my husband filled his cup at the office water cooler and felt something traveling down his arm when a pair of my unmentionables slithered out his sleeve, right onto the ground in front of his coworkers.
The deeper I wade into middle age, the less I rely on the rites and relics I once believed necessary for moving through the world. I haven’t tweezed my eyebrows for years, and high heels are a special-occasion occurrence. Don’t get me wrong: I love clothes—perhaps more now than ever. But perimenopause is the great reversal of puberty, returning me to a childlike state where play is paramount and physical discomfort is a threat, not the price of admission.
The final frontier is those elasticized cotton briefs. I haven’t yet summoned the courage to wear them beneath my jeans or (gasp!) white pants, displaying my visible panty line with pride. I hear that 85 percent of women over 51 refuse to wear thongs. Together, perhaps we can forget about all this hiding and come to our senses as one, buoying each other up with 10-packs of Fruit of the Loom briefs and wearing pairs in teal, dusty rose, and on days we feel frisky, maybe even polka dots.
Jaime Lewis (@jaimeclewis) has had personal essays published in The Washington Post, Huffington Post, Wine Enthusiast, and others. She lives in San Luis Obispo, CA.
