All the smalls things

Gentlemen, ladies of noble breeding and persons of a sensitive disposition, please look away now; I’m fresh out of smelling salts and really am not equipped with the appropriate manner to deal with attacks of the vapours or unscheduled swooning.

Just as civilisation is built on drains and wise men’s houses upon the rock, so is the comfort of the female of the species founded on undergarments. Pants, knickers, drawers, pantaloons, shorts, briefs, knickerbockers, skids, camiknickers, underwear, g-strings, silkies, French knickers, thongs, essentials, foundation garments, tangas, bikinis, hi-legs, hipsters, pantygirdles, unmentionables, bloomers, frillies, seamless, undies, lingerie, panties, fripperies, knick-knocks, smalls.

That there are so many words to describe such a small item just goes to underline how huge their importance is. Why, aside from gender-specific parts of the human physiology, I cannot think of many other individual things that have quite so many names. (Well, ok, it’s said that the Inuit peoples have 26 words for snow but that chilly climatic preoccupation is thoroughly understandable when living in the Arctic Circle.)

And of course we need so many words because there is no such thing as a standard pant. Colours, patterns, fabrics, the cut, the leg height, the waist height, the buttock girth, the holding-in-of-the-tum-ability, visible panty line considerations, communal changing area modesty… Essential variables one and all. Yes, choosing one’s undergarments is a serious business and not one to be done in a hurry or under undue influence of doughnuts.

Of these criteria, I personally find it to be the cut that’s the clincher. Or rather, careful selection can avoid one’s knick-knocks actually becoming the clincher if you get my drift. We may, as women, sometimes like to persuade ourselves that we are a little less, er, ample than we actually are, but it is a foolish woman indeed who deludes herself size-wise in the undergarment department. For that way doth trouser tugging and buttock pinching lie.

Although, gentlemen of tender years, do take heed (for it is not covered by the trade descriptions act nor any textbook that I have ever encountered); most women do not, and I repeat, do not habitually wear only flimsy pieces of lacy gossamer. Those are strictly for special occasions, most of us preferring solid cotton comfort on a daily basis. (Vis. Bridget Jones’s Diary; there was a reason why that film was so popular with women and it wasn’t just Mr Darcy.)

Just as it is said that one can never be too rich or too thin, I’d like to add that one can never have too many drawers. Not least as it’d mean I’d get one tick on that list. And so it was last night that I went to the giant 24-hour Tesco supermarket not far from my little house with a shopping list that included pineapple, dog food, cereal and pants. It still bemuses me that one can occasionally buy knickers in the same place as blue cheese, say, or mayonnaise. But I digress.

And there they were, a whole aisle full of them in all the colours of the spectrum and more besides. Patterned, plain, in individual pairs or multi-packs of five and encouragingly labelled in a euphemistically female-friendly fashion from XS to XL. Not only that, but they were doing a special offer of buy-two-pairs-get-one-free. How could I resist? Six pairs of knickers and two packs of pyjamas later, I staggered home with my pineapple and fed the dog.

And the only thing better than buying new pants? Wearing them. And so today, I am.

(Black and white patterned cotton, since you ask.)