Mind Body Mama: Abundant Underpants

I know, after last week’s post you really had your hopes up for more self defense success stories, replete with heartfelt introspection and good feminist politics. There’s more coming, I promise. But today, at the risk of sharing too much, I need to talk about underpants.

Small sings a song that goes like this:

Underwear, underwear
Always make sure that you’re wearing a pair.
Underwear, underwear,
Underwear is a must.
In these words you can trust.

That’s how the song went when MBA Mama gave us the CD (Bow-wow-wow by Dennis Caraher.) It’s decent as kids music goes, which is to say: Small likes it, and it doesn’t make my ears bleed. Parents give thanks for small things.

Small has made up alternate lyrics (pronounced, by her, “lie-ricks”) that celebrate an abundance of underpants:

Underwear, underwear
Always make sure that you’re wearing TEN pairs!
Underwear, underwear,
Underwear is a must.
In these words you can trust.

This, apparently, is hysterically funny. As in, snort your milk through your nose, giggle uncontrollably, funny. Six year old humor: love it or lose your mind trying.

Until recently, I would have had a hard time following the directive of the song because I didn’t have ten pairs of underwear to my name. Those I had were missing in action and/or in such a disreputable state they were in danger of self destruction.

Here’s a place where my tendency toward comedic hyperbole might work against my intention of confessing a deep psychological problem. My underpants were actually in danger of self destructing. One day I went to pull them up and my thumbs went through holes on both hips. I looked down as if I had never seen them before in my life and thought, these panties might fall off my body before the day is done.

You have to wonder what kind of person lets her underpants get to this state without taking any kind of corrective action. Is it not unlike a man who allows an enormous boil to overtake his face without visiting a physician? Or a woman who shows up in the emergency room with “indigestion” and an hour later pushes out a baby? One—and by one I mean, a middle aged married lesbian—does not shred one’s panties suddenly. It took years of washing and wearing to turn my entire collection of underpants into useless rags. And then it took another few years for me to notice, try to obtain replacements, and finally, eventually, meet with success.

It’s not like I didn’t try to upgrade my panties. I clearly remember visiting the underwear outlet in Brattleboro when we up for the Cow Parade two years ago in June. I didn’t find anything I liked. Just to be sure, I checked again after last year’s Cow Parade. Definitely nothing for me in Brattleboro.

Perhaps this is the moment to reveal my deep hatred for shopping—or perhaps it’s already transparent. It’s not just underpants that I fail to buy. Sweetiebabyhoneylicious is learning, thirteen years in, that purchases of sheets, towels or any other linens should not be a consensus decision. Because I will never agree that it’s time to buy new sheets—not even when Sweetie’s sleep is regularly disturbed by catching her toes in holes in the sheets. I have a huge and pathological blind spot to these things. It is not uncommon for me to hold up a piece of fabric while folding laundry and ask, “Rag or towel?” This is not an invitation to retire a worn out item—this is me asking for help telling the difference between our bath towels and our cleaning supplies. Sweetiebabylicious does a decent job of not throttling me at these moments, although she does engage in the dramatic eye roll.

I’m coming clean here: I have issues when it comes to linens. I hate to shop. But I did make a measly kind of effort. I checked Target for my preferred size and style of underwear when I visited that store every three or four months. (I hear that other people go to Target considerably more often than that, but I have to ask, why? There’s nothing to do there except buy things. What’s fun about that?) Through no fault of my own, I struck out.

Now, I want to say something about sizes of bottoms in our great United States. The average size of a woman in the U.S. is size 14. I am a size 8. I do not say that because I think there is anything superior about being a size 8. I like the zaftig girls myself, and if you averaged the adult bottoms in my household they’d come out to a size 14. I am thin. If I exercise and eat healthy food I am thin, energetic and strong. If I don’t exercise and eat crappy food I am thin, logey and bilious. I have committed my professional practice to the belief that all women’s bodies are perfect and beautiful just as they are, and that it’s time to overthrow the cult of thinness that oppresses us all.

So why even mention the differential between my bottom size and the average bottom size? Well, it brings us back to the panty wall. Every time I went to Target and perused the panty selection, I found nothing available in size 8. The larger sizes would be well stocked, available in every color and style, while the size 8 hooks remained empty and forelorn. So I had to wonder: if most women are size 14, where are all the size 8 panties going? Do skinny girls—myself excluded—buy more panties than everyone else? Or are the bigger girls squeezing themselves into size 8 panties? This would explain a lot of the crankiness in this world.

After my quarterly non-yielding trips to Target I would come home and ponder—perhaps even engage in a small rant—about the confusing shortage of size 8 panties. Then, exhausted from the mental effort of this conundrum, I would abandon my quest for another several months.

It’s possible that I was waiting for packages of new underpants to appear in my dresser drawer. I don’t know why that strategy didn’t work for me: my father’s dresser drawers manifested fresh packs of briefs, tee-shirts, and tube socks at regular intervals throughout my childhood. For all I know, they still do. Perhaps he has a different type of bureau than I do. Or a different type of wife.

But a few weeks ago, I suddenly experienced a panty paradigm shift. It was this: if I am devoting this year to a celebration of abundance and gratitude, I can’t be carrying on in tattered drawers. There is nothing abundant about underpants that tear as you pull them onto your body, nothing about that experience that honors and celebrates the possibility of getting all that I wish for out of life. I pulled myself together and visited a non-Target store, and lo-and-behold: the selection was thin for skinnies, but there were two packages for me to bring home. I can’t overstate the delight they bring me. It’s like having a collection of small, soft jewels nestled in my lingerie drawer. If I put them all on at one time, there would be way more than ten pairs. You heard it here: Underwear is a must. In these words you can trust.