What to do about the Visible Panty Line?

Speed blog by Sarah Farraway

 

I will confess to being a long-time lover of the G-string. Obsessed as I am with the dreaded VPL and fond as I am of a nice pair of tailored trousers - the G-string has been my friend for many a year. Probably since the night my father suggested I go knickerless under my skirt for the school disco to avoid a case of VPL. He thought it was unsightly. I was 15 - and aghast. I had visions of being the ‘girl with no knickers’ for the rest of my school days, of pimply teenage boys hanging around like flies. I wore the knickers, put up with the VPL and bought my first G-string soon after.

 

I always found them comfortable but my adventures in G-string land have caused some embarrassment. There was the time I left my favourite black cotton Bendon G-string at my friends’ grandparents house after staying there with her. They sent it back to us in the mail with a note saying they weren’t sure what it was but thought it probably belonged to one of us.  This was 15 years ago and I saw them two months ago at her wedding and even though they are now very elderly and have dementia, they chuckled as they remembered me as ‘the G-string girl’.

 

Or the time my girlfriend decided it would be hilarious to wear my (admittedly very tiny) candy-pink coloured G-string as an eye patch at a dinner party we were hosting, when I had a crush on one of our male guests and was trying to impress him.

 

But I had a baby last year and sad as this is to admit, my bottom is NOT the same. Its not round and perky like it used to be and it just doesn’t look - or feel - good in a G-string anymore.  So I tried developing a fondness for the ‘big knicker’.....but still there’s the VPL problem.  Even the ones that go right under your bottom leave a line across your thigh. I am a daggy full-time mum these days and can’t be bothered to wear a bra most days but I still have standards!

 

So my solution ladies, which I’m sure you’ve all tried, is the French knicker, with their cut across the middle of your bottom. I love them. They look beautiful and even though they sound like a VPL nightmare, if you get them in a delicate enough lace or other material, they don’t show - at all. And the best bit is I chuck them in my front-load washing machine on a delicate cycle and they come out good as new.

 

But I do suggest being discerning about who you get dressed in front of.  As I walked around my bedroom in a lovely pair of pale-green lace French knickers recently, my 9-year-old stepson laughed and said “Sarah, your undies don’t fit, your bottom’s hanging out”. Charming.

 

Sarah Farraway is living and studying in Sydney while raising a newborn and three stepchildren.

Pant rant

Speed Blog, by Wendy Saunt

If there was ever a word that makes me feel decidedly unwell, it’s panties. I know it’s
meant to be sweet and innocuous, but it isn’t - it makes me want to be sick down my
front. It is, you see, the word of choice for glamour photographers, Japanese
businessmen and their ilk - as in “I know you’re only 15 but if you could just slip your
panties off, love” and “I know I’m married with teenage daughters but I really want
some panties worn by schoolgirls” - and that can never be a good thing.

And, of course, aside from the nasty ‘barely legal’ connotations, there are so many
better words for them: grundies, shreddies, underclackers or the achingly beautiful and
simple knickers, to name but a few.

Knickers - proper knickers, that is, with a proper back bit - are very important indeed
and it’s time to bring them back. Back, that is, to the lingerie sets they rightly belong to
and from which someone decided to replace them with fugly boy shorts and anus-
garroting g-strings. Seriously, did you, Marks & Spencer man, ask any woman about
this? Any woman over the age of 25, that is?

Seeing as I don’t think you did, let me tell you this: women love knickers - with their
canny ability to cover arse, be relatively flattering (unlike their respectively dowdier
and sluttier compatriots) and not have to be constantly retrieved from one’s bottom.
So, stop denying us ladies one of life’s great pleasures - a really great pair of knickers.

Wendy Saunt is a interior designer, writer and art consultant. She lives in London. You can follow her on Twitter @Wendy__Saunt

 

SpeedBlog No. 5 - Pants pants pants...the small things we love to love and love to hate.

Any good stories about pants big or small? Have they caused you, or anyone you know, thrombosis? Ever forgotten to wear them? Ever 'forgotten' to wear them? What was your favourite pair? Have you found the perfect manufacturer of beautiful big pants? Tell us, tell all.

Yes, SpeedBlog No. 5 is about pants. Knickers, panties, keks, jocks, lingerie...we all wear it love or hate. What good pants stories have you got for us? Photos encouraged.

Send your entry to notthestylepages AT gmail DOT com. 

You can read Katherine Burgdorf's amusing advocacy of big knickers here.

and Gabrielle Jackson's shock confession on nanna knickers here.

Why big knickers matter.

Do these fit? Available here

'Underwear...is the specialist clothing of being a woman. They are the female equivalent of the fireman's jumpsuit and helmet.Or the large shoes of a clown. (But) over the years we have made knickers harder and harder. Knickers have gradually become difficult. And the reason for this is that knickers have become smaller. Much smaller. Too small.' (Moran 2011, Chapter 5).

Caitlin Moran goes on to write in her book 'How to be a Woman,' that feminism demands larger pants. Big pants. And I think she's right. Not just because feminism is about the humanisation of women - just as anti-feminism is about the discomfort of women whether political, economic or physical. But because big pants are more versatile. I know a woman who led a terrified horse from a burning stable by putting her massive pants over its eyes and leading it calmly to safety. Another lady I know has not only given up plastic shopping bags but also those environmentally friendly jute ones. Instead, at the checkout, she just holds her big undies out from her waist and pops her tinned tomatoes and pasta shells down the front. Job done. And it's a no brainer that if you were a female Prime Minister you could not afford to collapse at Prime Minister's Question Time from a lack of blood to the head caused by too tight knickers. If you did you'd better hope they were at least a matching set.

The thing I can't understand is how we can get design so right - the Dyson, anything by Apple, Philippe Stark's Ghost chair, Armani jackets - but not for knickers. Surely someone out there can design underpants that are both beautiful AND comfortable...which is to say they actually encase your buttocks 100 per cent of the time and do not require surgical removal from your crack at the end of the day. This is, after all, the primary purpose of pants.

It's not as if we want to wear ugly pants. We definitely don't. We are all, I'm sure, scared by the memory of our mothers' underwear drawer, rammed with those horrible, shiny synthetic Triumph pants...seemingly only ever made in beige (even the word is hideous), grey white or static black. Possibly they were comfortable, though you wouldn't want to stand near a naked flame, but hideous. Where's the middle ground?

My husband likes to buy me underwear. He probably buys me a set each year and, because I buy my knickers in 5-packs from M&S for £3.00, it's always a welcome gift. La Perla generally gets the thumbs up for style and comfort. Fred & Ginger's knickers, on the other hand, are as beautiful as a geisha and three times as cruel...you may as well stick a hedgehog up your fanny, front and back. And so what is a wonderful thought can become a fractious gift. On the one hand anyone in long term relationship clings to romance like they would a dying child. On the other hand the thought of popping a hedgehog up your front and back bottom and adopting any kind of 'come hither' pose is physically impossible unless you're specially trained for it by the SAS. And since you can't take a pair of torturous pants back for a refund they tend to be wedged further and further to the back of your marriage, I mean drawer. Incidentally I know a man who refused to buy his girlfriend expensive underwear because what she wanted was skin coloured. Fascinating.

And that's the thing. The underwear we need for work isn't the underwear being designed and sold. Five days out of seven I need underwear that disappears under close-fitting t-shirts, shirts, dresses and blouses. It needs to be white, skin coloured or black, and seamless. It also needs to be tough enough for the washing machine. It's a lovely idea hand washing underwear but who the hell has the time? I promise myself I'll do it every time I splurge on a new set, but the commitments lasts precisely one hadwash and then I'm back to the spin cycle. Ninety-nine per cent of underwear for sale isn't what we need. It's like being sent in to bat without shin pads, or up that fire ladder without a helmet. It's like a Tory MP at your first day in Parliament and being forced into a 'Labour-red' tie. Men would not stand for it. Why do we?

But then, from what I read these days men are becoming victims of underwear too. Buttock flattering padded pants, Spanx for men ('Manx'), and a cornucopia of coloured designer cock covers are marching into the lives of our loved ones, wooing them like viscious lovers. It's tempting to watch it unfold but really, I'm not sure we'd be aiding humanity. Comfortable nether regions should be a universal right of humankind. I'm not altogether sure the Palestinian-Israeli conflict isn't caused by too-tight keks. And I'm telling you, if Al Qaeda isn't an organisation directly caused by bearded desert men getting too much sand up their clackers then I don't know what it is. Get those fellas in some of Gabrielle Jackson's anti-bacterial travel knickers and I think we could probably call the axis of evil 'closed'.

Whether for feminism or world peace I think Caitlin Moran is spot on. We do need to reassess our tolerance for uncomfortable underwear. We own fourth generation touch screen computer tablets, cars with heated steering wheels (well, not me, but I know they exist) and phones that can triangulate our location by satellite in relation to the nearest bottle of Pouilly Montrachet. There really is no excuse for someone not to have designed the perfect pair of knickers. As and when they do, we must buy them and leave the scratchy satin postage stamps firmly stacked in the stockpile of the man factories they come from. Like battery eggs, say 'NO!' to bad pants.

Katherine Burgdorf doesn't write as often as she should for Notthestylepages. After a mugging on the way home from a date in 2005 she felt unable to tell police the contents of her stolen handbag included a spare pair of knickers. (They were clean!)

Have you got an opinion on big pants? Tell us about it.
 '

Pop music is fucked

by Gabrielle Jackson

Now, I’m not one for popular culture, but sitting around in bars and cafés for hours on end exposes one to such things. For the most part, it’s been fun, and I’ve been seen bopping along to the tune of my keyboard in more than one hot spot. And then I started hearing the lyrics. And then, even worse, I saw the film clips!

At the risk of revealing of my age and my closet prudishness, I’ve got to say I was shocked. Well, no, shocked isn’t quite right since I realise I’m not expressing a highly original opinion. I’ve heard it said, but until you see it, you really don’t understand. To say I was profoundly disappointed would be more accurate an expression.

Is every song in the top 40 (do they still have such a thing?) about fucking? I use the ‘f’ word on purpose. I have no problem with songs about love or sex, really, my problem is with the way it is represented. Because it really is fucking we’re talking about here, rather more clearly than love or sex or longing or heartache.

I swear I heard a song – by a man – saying over and over again, ‘Tonight I’m fucking you’. I thought to myself, ‘Not if you keep that up, you won’t be!’ with a great hurumph for all womankind. And then I heard Rihanna singing a song about how she’s a good girl but loves a bit of S&M. AND THEN I saw some film clips and realised that, actually, that’s what they appear to want, these women, they want to be fucked. Not loved or longed for; fucked. Almost every song by a woman featured her in some skimpy outfit making suggestive – submissive – motions to the camera.

Beyoncé appeared to be singing a song about girls ruling the world while writhing around on the ground in a pair of underpants. I don’t know if the message we’re to take from this is that girls can rule the world by being fucked by all the men in it. Because, dear Beyoncé, I hate to break it to you, but we’re already being fucked by all the men in the world without having to ask for it.

Beyoncé’s sexuality is so instinctive, so primal, that my nephew, when he was four, exclaimed to my sister upon seeing one of her videos, ‘Oh Mama, I like the way she moves!’ There’s no doubt about it, she’s one sexy woman, and there’s nothing wrong with being sexy. I love Beyoncé, but does she have to go for it in every film clip? Surely, the sum of her talent amounts to more than her amazing body.

Perhaps the wealth of their talent lets Adele and Alicia Keys off the hook for having to submit to this kind of embarrassing exhibition. And I do hope it is the wealth of their talent that has them emerge as the role models for young women, because I really don’t want my nieces and nephews to grow up thinking that the point of being a woman is purely to be desired by a man.

Come on girls, it’s 2013, can’t we do better for ourselves?

This post originally appeared on KebabQuest

SHOCK CONFESSION: I’m addicted to granny knickers

By Gabrielle Jackson

I’ve got a confession to make: I’m addicted to granny knickers.

Fast dry, sweat wicking, anti-bacterial travel knickers from the French travel brand, Tilley (I’ve dropped the French in to give them some credibility that they don’t deserve) are now my go-to everyday knicker grabs.

I know they’re ugly. I even know they turned off a very attractive French man who was a sure thing (if you know what I mean). He hung around for a week while I wasn’t putting out or doing anything, really, other than reading my book and complaining about the Tanzanian heat.

We had some of the best kissing sessions of my life in the week I hung out with him. He followed me everywhere. And even though I hid from him for one whole day and when I saw him see me, I ducked, he persisted. He was practically begging for it. Some nights I actually saw the drool dripping down his chin.

In other words, I was doing everything right.

But then I got sunburnt (owing to his inexpert application of the sunscreen on my back – bloody people with nice skin have NO idea) and he caught me lying in bed wearing just my granny knickers. White cotton knickers that came almost up to my waist. The white had stayed remarkably white, if not bright, but there was some definite pilling action happening.

The passion died immediately. Nothing was the same after that. He was French! And pointing out to him that the horrible, saggy, humungous knickers were in actual fact made by a French brand did nothing to reignite the passion*.

What makes the situation even more remarkable is that I wore a matching underwear set every single day from the time I was 21 until the time I left for my kebab quest at age 34. Every day, I would dress in perfectly matching, bright-coloured bra and knickers. I wouldn’t leave the house without a matching set.

Granted, most of these sets were given to me by my mother every birthday and Christmas (they’re easy to send in the post), but I wore them and I loved them. When I felt horrible on the outside and hadn’t brushed my hair or washed my jeans, I felt good underneath.

For someone who works from home and pretty much wears the same uniform of jeans and a t-shirt/jumper every single day of the week, having something nice and special on her body is important. If I didn’t wear my lovely underwear, I may as well not even bother to wash. They made me feel good.

And then I travelled with my Tilley. They were wonderful things for travelling: they never got crusty or smelly, even after 20-hour bus journeys in the Indian desert. They were easy to wash and dried quickly.

But they were hideous too look at. Hideous! My travel companions were horrified by them.

So how can I admit that now, home to a place where it is not difficult to wash your knickers or change them regularly, where I have access to vast array of lovely matching sets, I am still wearing my fast dry, sweat wicking, anti-bacterial travel knickers? 

Should these knickers be hung out to dry for good?

Even though I know that they dispelled a man who was besotted** with me – the surest sure thing of all time – I am still addicted to them. Post travel. I only have four pairs and I keep wearing them, washing them, and wearing them again.

How will I break this vicious cycle? How can I get back to wearing pretty, colourful matching sets that I didn’t even know were uncomfortable until I became so well acquainted with my travel knickers?

And this is coming from a 35-year-old woman who is currently living with her parents, has no job, a deformed finger, a bulging bicep, can’t drive or use a knife and fork and is writing this article using voice recognition software because she can’t type***.

I don’t have much going for me so my nice underwear should be my ONE asset.

What am I to do?

*This isn't entirely true. Some passion did ensue, but I judged him harshly for judging me on my knickers and went off him - and the snog sessions - pretty quickly after that. I don't think he was too bothered.
**This may be a slight exaggeration. Although he did ask me to meet his parents. What do you think that means?
*** Owing to shoulder surgery I've had after being run over by a train in India (wearing said Tilley knickers. Turns out they can protect you from thrush but not trains. Good news is, even though I landed in a pile of oil and shit on the tracks and had to lay there until the train went over me, the Tilley knickers washed up a treat!)

Have you got an opinion on big pants? Tell us about it.  

ALSO READ:
Why big knickers matter, 
Pant rant
What to do about the visible panty line? 

New Year Fiction: I love you, Robbie

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This is an unfinished short story I started one January. I'm publishing it as a draft just to remind us at this time of year that not all New Years' Resolutions should be kept. 

Or should they?

And just for some New Year fun, tell me how you think the story should end. 

I love you, Robbie

DRAFT

by Gabrielle Jackson

London, January 2010. 

Have you ever stuck your foot under a tap and not known whether it was hot or cold? It usually happens when you’re cold and you jump into a bath and you feel a really strong sensation but you don’t know if it hurts – if it’s hot and therefore dangerous – or if it’s just an initial shock owing to the change in temperature and it’s actually good. Really good, even.

Well, that’s how I felt about Robbie. I didn’t know if I loved him or hated him. And the more I analysed it and tried to think about it, the more I didn’t know. So I decided to tell him that I loved him. I made the decision at 05.29am on 2 January. It felt momentous and important and the right thing to do. I hadn’t been able to sleep at all, but after that I went off like a baby. That’s how I knew it was definitely the right thing to do.

Later, when I found a note scribbled in pink lipliner on the back of an HSBC envelope, presumably dug out of my wastepaper basket, that read, “I love you, Robbie”, I figured it was supposed to serve as both a reminder and practice, but I didn’t need it. I’d remembered before I even found that note and I took it as just another sign I was making the right decision.

So, at a few minutes to midnight (I’d made a vow to myself I would take action that day) on 2 January, I emailed Robbie and asked if he’d like to meet up for a coffee or a drink. I suggested a place I’d been meaning to go to. He opted for the coffee (trying not to drink in January, whatever!) and agreed the time and place.

“Hey, how’s it hanging,” he said.

A little alarm went off. Who says that? But it was a little alarm, a kind of ker-ching! rather than full-on sirens, so I decided to ignore it. I had made up my mind to tell him I loved him and I couldn’t stop it even though he was still wearing his jeans too low, like he was a member of One Direction or something.

            “You’re too old to wear your jeans like that,” was my response.

            So we were off to a good start then. It didn’t make sense that I would love this person and yet it so made sense. It only made sense. Nothing else made sense except us being together.

“There are seventeen-year-old kids running around on the X Factor who dress like you. You’re thirty…”

“Thirty-two.”

“You’re thirty-two and you’re a professional and you still dress like that.”

“Is that why you wanted to meet?” he asked, in a tone of mild forebearance.

“No.”

“Then what?”

“Shall we go in?”

“Good idea.”

We walked into A Little of What You Fancy and sat down. At least there was a table free. I guess nobody wants to go out at this time of year. January is not a good month for going out. It’s not a good month for reunions either, is it? It is not a good time for making decisions; there is no clarity as we all trudge through the month, eyes half open, suffering from our holiday hangovers. It’s why nobody ever keeps their New Year’s Resolutions – because they’re made at the worst possible time of year, when we’re least able to think clearly. I have always tried to make half-year resolutions myself. I don’t keep them either, but that’s more to do with my personality than my clarity of mind. This all just occurred to me as I picked up the menu.

The alarm bell finally turned into a siren. My great clarity of mind – that the water was tepid and I loved Robbie – was a trick of the season; a bad hangover decision.

“So why did you want to meet?” he asked, as I stared at the menu blankly.

“Oh, I just wanted to tell you my news. I think I’m going to get engaged.”

“Oh my God, I can’t believe it. So am I.”

What? What had I just said? And more importantly, what had he said? I had no idea where that lie came from. How did I go from ‘I love you’ to ‘I’m engaged to somebody else’? It was January’s fault. I hate January. I ordered a large glass of red wine as I pondered how I’d get through this. I am a terrible liar. I honestly didn’t know what I was going to do.

But Robbie, he was calm, the most animated, in fact, he’d been so far. No wonder he was ordering coffee; he was engaged – no need to drown out the misery of January and a new year spent alone with large quantities of wine and/or gin.THANK GOD I'd had to foresight to choose a place that sold both coffee and wine.

‘So who’s the lucky guy?’ he smiled, and it seemed genuine.

‘Oh, I don’t want to talk about it now.’

‘You don’t want to talk about your fiancé?’

‘Oh, it’s not that,’ I stumbled through, ‘it’s just that I came here to catch up with you, not talk about that.’

‘You said you wanted to tell me your news.’

‘And now I’ve told you, tell me about you. I want things to be alright between us, you know?’

Ah, that was a nice touch. The wine was helping. Perhaps I could drag myself out of this for now and decide how to undo the lie later. In February, or March maybe.

‘Yeah, fair enough. I’m glad you asked me here actually. It….’

There was a pretty long silence. I think he was waiting for me to finish his sentence. I used to finish his sentences all the time, and even though he said he hated it, I knew he liked it, or at least expected it and came to rely on it. But today, I couldn’t. The pit in my stomach was too deep; it hurt too much. With every passing minute the reality of his words ‘So am I!’ sunk a little deeper into that pit. He was engaged! I wanted to tell him I loved him and he wanted to tell me he loved somebody else.

‘It depresses me,’ he had continued and I tried as hard as I could to listen to him while also trying to get the waiter’s attention. Finally a young woman came to our table.

‘May I have a bottle of that wine I was just drinking please?’

‘Shall I bring another glass then?’ she looked at Robbie, who was shaking his head.

‘Yes please,’ I said a little too loudly, and she walked off slightly confused.

‘I told you I wasn’t drinking,’ Robbie said.

‘OK, fine, don’t drink it. The glass won’t hurt you. I just didn’t want her to know I was going to drink it all on my own.’

‘Why are you drinking it all on your own?’

‘Because I feel like it, and it’s cold out and it warms me up and it tastes nice. Are they enough reasons?’

 Oh no, no, no, don’t go down that path, I said to myself. Be nice. You came here to be nice. You came here because you actually love this man and you can’t even be nice to him.

            ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘You were saying something depresses you.’

            ‘You,’ he said, and he looked into my eyes with what I’d always mistaken for love. ‘It depresses me when you’re not in my life. I miss you. I want to be friends.’

I left A Little of What You Fancy some hours later and didn’t look back as Robbie watched me wander down the Kingsland Road. I could feel I had red wine stuck to my lips and my teeth were probably brown and I tried to scrub them clean with my tongue. I don’t think that’s ever a very effective solution, but part of me felt there was no point trying to look nice anyway. Robbie was getting married and it wasn’t to me. Robbie, who I had confessed my love to on the back of an envelope in pink lipliner. Maybe if I’d said it before, or more often, maybe if I’d been clearer, it would not be this way.

            I walked into the Tesco Metro that I hated and stared in the refrigerated section for something I could eat that would make me feel better. I hesitated over a packet of Scotch eggs and wondered who invented the rule that Scotch eggs may only be consumed at picnics. It seems stupid but even still, I couldn’t go through with it so I picked up a frozen lasagne instead. Then I spotted some bacon and thought I could make myself some pasta with it, and then I ran into a man and realised I was a bit drunk and probably shouldn’t rely on my cooking skills. So I kept the lasagne and bought myself another bottle of wine to go with it.

            I left Tesco and continued down Kingsland Road towards home. The moon was broken and I thought it looked how my heart felt. It was two days after a full moon. I don’t know what you call the moon when it’s not quite full but it looks like it’s broken, like a little piece has just been chipped off the side, but I looked at it and said, 'I know how you feel.'

            It had always been complicated between Robbie and me. I now had to face the fact that it was probably because I loved him and he wanted to be friends. It had always been that way, really, if I’m honest with myself. 

So...what happens next? Tell me below.