September 12, 2023 • 29 mins
Yep, you read that right! This week I’m talking about UNDERWEAR and why I need coverage for both of my booty cheeks! Listen in for ways to navigate the various categories of underwear and why comfortable underwear is a great thing. Please enjoy this episode from the HER Archives.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:33):
Everybody, Welcome back to a new episode of Her with
Amina Brown, and I am your host, Amina Brown, and
the topic of this episode was not intended to be
correlated to the number of this episode, but the title
is correct. We are going to discuss why I think
(00:53):
it's important that I should have underwear that covers both
of my booty cheeks. And maybe you feel the same way,
but I wasn't doing that because so number is sixty nine.
And if that joke doesn't make any sense to you,
let's go on to the next thing. So, I, first
of all, have talked to a couple of girlfriends recently
about just my current thoughts on the importance of my underwear.
(01:14):
I'm not gonna be talking as much about bras today.
I think I will do a separate episode regarding that.
Today we're going to focus on underwear. We're gonna focus
on draws. We're gonna focus on panties or whatever you
call your underwear or your draws. All three of those
terms will be interchangeable for me during this episode. It's
interesting because part of what brought up this idea that
(01:35):
I was like, I'm gonna take this into her living room.
We're all gonna bring our hummus and our partially cut
up green peppers and talk about this. I was talking
to a couple of girlfriends recently about how my relationship
to my underwear is changing, which is probably about a
bigger discussion of where my body is changing, and that
(01:55):
is changing my relationship to how I want to feel
in my clothing. Right. But before we get into that,
I want to talk about what I was told growing
up about underwear. And it's interesting to think about this,
right because I've talked on this podcast before about how
I grew up in church, grew up in a very
strict conservative environment. And when I say conservative, I don't
(02:17):
just mean politically, although there may have been some ways
it was that it was a conservative environment politically, but
I mean conservative in the sense of, you know, wanting
you to wear clothing where you know pretty much it
was going to be you know, your body was going
to be covered, and particularly covered around genitalia, breasts, you know,
like obviously booty, all those things. Want all of that
(02:42):
to be covered up and not be seen or be
close to being seen. Right, And in addition to that,
we also want the clothing you wear to not be
so tight that those things are more easily seen or
air quotes imagined right, which you know, takes us down
a road of purity culture. And you may not be
(03:05):
familiar with that if that wasn't something that you grew
up with. But in a lot of Christian churches and
Christian communities, there was this idea that sexual purity was
very much related to how you dressed, what you wore,
and the bulk of the pressure of remaining air quotes
pure was put on girls or women right in order
(03:26):
to make sure they were not air quotes temptations to men.
So I was definitely growing up in an environment like that.
I sang in the choir at church, and at least
one or two Sundays of the month, the choir wore
black and white, and in my church's case, that meant
that women wore black skirts. So I don't remember us
(03:48):
being able to wear black pants. I remember it was
black skirts, black pantyhose, black shoes, and then you'd wear
a white blouse and there was a lot of conversation,
believe it or not, around what kind of undergarment you
should be wearing under your white blouse. Or on Easter,
we would actually dress in all white in the choir,
(04:10):
So then it was a discussion among the women in
the choir of what undergarments were presentable to wear underneath
your white dress. My mom raised me that if you're
wearing white, that I should wear black undergarments. Of course,
this is before the current time that we're living in, y'all,
(04:30):
where now underwear and undergarments are being made in nude
colors that are actually nude for most people that have
like different shades of nude. But when I was growing up,
nude was beige, So that wasn't going to help you
if you were brown skin or darker. Whereas now you
(04:53):
have a lot more options, those weren't there then you
basically had white, beige slash nude air quotes or black.
And so my mom would always say, if you're wearing white,
you should wear black undergarments. That way, no one can
see your bra or anything through you, know, whatever you're wearing.
I also want to bring up an old school term
(05:14):
that I haven't heard anyone say in a long time,
which is a slip. And if you grew up in
a church setting, and I want to speak particular to you,
if you grew up in a black church setting. Then
you grew up either wearing a slip at some point
in your life, or the other women that you were
around were wearing slips. Some of you are like, what
is a slip? A slip is a satiny garment that
(05:39):
could be a half slip. I should have had my
grandma owned to talk about this. A half slip was
basically something you wore that was like a satiny material
that was the same length as your skirt or your dress,
but it created this extra layer so that if someone
were to look at you, they couldn't see the un
(06:00):
to wear that you were wearing underneath your dress. And
there were such things as full slips, which had straps
and you know, had like the shape for your breast
to go, and then they went down into the skirt
similar to the half slip, right, And then if you
wore just the top part, somehow that was considered to
(06:20):
be a camusol that was not considered to be a
half slip, even though technically it was. So these were
all garments that I became really familiar with when I
was growing up because in order to be dressed for
church and to try to air quotes, dress modestly and
all of that, you would wear all these different layers,
you know, under everything, And did that give me a
(06:44):
certain kind of complex about my body? I'm pretty sure.
I'm pretty sure it gave all of us this sort
of feeling that as girls growing up, and then as
we became adults as women, this sort of idea of
how much of our do we have to hide or
disguise in some way? And I do remember it was
(07:06):
interesting when I started singing in the choir that a
lot of the choir leadership would tell us as women
that we should be wearing white slips, we should be
wearing white undergarments, bras included, and that was like never
a usual that was not a usual thing from my mom.
So I remember my first Sunday singing in the choir,
(07:27):
I had on this white kind of rayon blouse and
then I had on I was young, y'all, I was
probably twelve or thirteen, my first time singing in the choir.
So I had on this rayon kind of blouse, short sleeve,
button up blouse, and then I had on my little bra,
which is probably still very much like a little training
(07:47):
bra basically, and then my mom had bought me a
black kind of silky or satiny camusol to wear underneath it.
And one of the missionaries at the church, because our
church had all these different like leadership positions, right, So
there were deacons, there were missionaries, ministers, and elders, right.
(08:12):
And some of you may hear the term missionary and
think about people who you go and they travel places
to share the Christian religion in those communities. And I
think that may have been true over some of some
of the missionaries in our church, but I think they
were more locally doing some types of community work. That
was always my assumption. Anyways. So one of the missionaries,
(08:34):
I didn't know her well at all. I knew her name,
but I don't know that we'd ever had like a
full fledged conversation. And she came up to me to
ask me about if I was wearing a bra under
my shirt. After the service had ended that day, she
asked me, and I said, yes, that I was wearing
(08:57):
a bra. And I explained to her what I said
to y'all that I was wearing a camasol, and she
told me, well, you should wear white so that we know,
like this is a wild thing, so that we know
you're wearing undergarments. So that was a wild time of
life because on the one hand, I'm being told as
a girl to sort of try to hide my body,
(09:18):
to try to hide my breast, hide my hips, hide
my booty, hide everything that that could cause me to
be sexualized by a boy or a man. Right. And
then at the same time I'm being told, well, it's
(09:38):
not just that we want you to hide those things. Well,
now we want you to wear a certain kind of
slip or top or whatever under there that shows us
you're wearing your undergarments. Right. So it was this very strange,
like disparate message to get and that sort of gave
(10:03):
me kind of weird thoughts about the purpose or the
goal of underwear. And I think that taught me growing up. Well,
obviously my undergarments are in some way performative for other people,
but very specifically in that environment, they're performative for boys
or men. It's either that I need to be worried
(10:25):
that what I wear is air quotes tantalizing to them,
or I need to do my best to hide everything
so that they won't be tempted, or I need to
wear something that shows I'm wearing something so that they
won't be tempted terrible. I do remember by the time
I got through high school and got into college, this
(10:50):
was around the era of It was kind of that
time of college where maybe I'm trying to think was
I a junior by them. I don't think so. So
I think it was maybe my first year or so,
coming back home from school. I really can't remember the
all the way full details of this, but what I
remember the most is that I was out with one
(11:13):
of my best friends, Adrian, and we had gone shopping.
I feel like we were later in college at this time.
I feel like we'd gotten to the point in college
where you're starting to do interviews for internships or summer jobs,
things like this. And this is when the store The
Limited was very popular. I might be telling my age
(11:33):
to say that store, but shout out to you if
you remember this. The Limited was a very popular store,
and that was sort of where when you were in
your early twenties, that was where you got your first
sort of business attire. And wide leg pants were very
very popular, and so I was thinking, man, I needed
to get like some underwear to make here we go again,
(11:56):
y'all with the I need to get some underwear to
not show that I'm wearing underwear. So I bought this
thong when I was out with Adrian, my first time
ever buying that, and came home and put the bag
in the laundry room and then I left out to
(12:17):
go back and hang out with my friends. I remember
getting home and my mom was like I walked in
the house and she was like, what you need this for?
Who you're wearing this for? And I was like, we
just went interviewed panty line, like it was such a
big deal then for your pantyline not to show. So
(12:39):
that was the purpose of wearing a thong, was so
that you would still air quotes have on underwear. But
now it can look like you don't have on underwear
because you don't have the pantylines on your booty cheeks. Right,
So my mom and I had a whole talk, and
basically that thong got confiscated and I can't tell you
where it's at today. Not only did my mom confiscate
(12:59):
that thong, she brought me a pair of some bloomers
that she had and she handed me those, like here,
if you worried about your pantelon wear, those actually, I'm
not gonna lie though that I have to give a
small shout out to my mom because I'm like, wow,
is that basically the type of underwear I wear now? Anyways?
So all that to say, I sort of like went
(13:20):
away from the thought of cute or sexy underwear at
that point, and now I had the bloomers, so I
didn't really need the thong. I think later a mentor
like figure of mine bought me a couple of thongs
when she just helped me like get an outfit for
an event, if I remember right, And so I had
(13:42):
thongs because she bought them, but it took me many
years before I ever bought my own like thong like underwear.
And I do think we all sort of go through
some type of underwear evolution. A part of that, obviously,
it is because you know, when we're growing up in
our families, our family have a way they purchased things,
they have, you know, whatever budget it is, you know,
(14:04):
so you just kind of are accepting whatever you're given.
For some of you, those may have been you know,
hand me downs right in your family if you weren't
the oldest kid. And for some of you that may
have been a particular store that you remember going to
because that's what your family could afford. And then you
get to a point where you become an adult yourself.
You're you're now responsible for buying your own underwear. And
(14:26):
so I think I was probably in my like early
to mid twenties when I was starting to buy all
this stuff for myself, you know, having my own job
and all that, and realizing like, okay, well I like
to go to Target. That's a pretty easy place I
can go and get Hanes or through the Loom underwear there.
But then they also had their sort of Target brand
(14:47):
underwear that were like, you know, for me and the
budget I was on, they were very nice. So I
was like, this is great. And then by the time
I got into my mid to late twenties, I started
to think more about what does you know, sort of
a grown ass woman's underwear drawer look like, you know,
(15:08):
because up to that point my underwear had been very functional. Really,
I wasn't as concerned about cuteness or anything. And I
feel like I was reading some articles about, you know,
things that like every woman should have in her wardrobe
type articles, and they were talking about how, you know,
(15:28):
as a grown woman, you should have matching bra and
panties sets. I had never bought bra and panties together. Never.
I never done that. I would just go to the
(15:54):
store and get underwear if I was, you know, running
out or whatever. And then I don't even know. I
was buying my bras for a while, and probably some
of my bras even into my twenties, my mom or
my grandma was buying for me for my birthday or
Christmas or whatever, you know. So I was like, Okay,
you're supposed to buy a matching set together. Wow, okay,
(16:15):
And that is what sent me to Victoria's Secret. Victoria's
Secret was sort of my entry level point into underwear
that I thought would be cute. I think I was,
first of all, you know, looking to just have cute
underwear and cute underwear that matched with the bras that
I was buying, right. I do think by the time
I got in my late twenties, I was looking to
(16:37):
have sexy underwear. I was not looking to have sexy
underwear or cute underwear because anyone was seeing them, mind you,
because no one was seeing them. But as I was
getting older and getting more comfortable in my own skin,
you know, I wanted to have some underwear that I liked,
and I think as I got into my late twenties,
(16:59):
I wanted to have some underwear that made me feel sexy,
you know, And so that sent me to Victoria's Secret
and the whole concept of getting measured for your bras
and underwears. I will talk about bras fully in another episode, y'all,
but getting measured for bras was a very fascinating time.
And then you're figuring out what your actual underwear sizes,
(17:21):
and then going into Victoria's Secret and being like, man,
there are a lot of different types of underwear, you know,
Like Victoria's Secret had thongs and bikinis, and they had
boy shorts and high leg high waist. I mean, there
(17:41):
were a lot of There were a lot more choices
there than I was used to, you know, experiencing and target.
And I really loved that underwear evolution for me of
sort of starting to make the choices for myself for
what I like to have on for what makes me
feel good. I got married in my early thirds, and
like many folks when they get married, I had sort
(18:04):
of two separate bridal showers, if I remember, right, I
had one that was more like the household stuff that
people give you. First of all, the time period of
getting married for straight people can be very fascinating as
far as the tradition's there, Like somehow the groom just
(18:25):
gets to like be out and about somewhere, but you
are the one expected to be there for all those
castroll dishes, like both of y'all aren't going to use them,
Like all that stuff is put on the woman in
that scenario, and it's just a very wild tradition that
we have there. But I had a broader shower like
that where you're sort of getting all your housewares. That's
typically the bridle shower that you invite your mother and
(18:45):
your mother in law, your grandmother, your aunts and people
like that. That's the one that you invite them to
because you don't want your friend to buy you like
a vibrator, and you're opening that in front of your
mom and your mother in law, right. And then I
had a separate shower that was friends only. That was
all the lingerie, all the sexy underwear for everything. And
(19:08):
even now that my husband and I have been married,
you know over ten years now, you know, I think
the best place for me, of whatever type of sexy
underwear I want to have, should still start with what
makes me feel sexy, what makes me feel good? You know.
So let's talk about where I am with draws today,
(19:30):
and you two think about where you are with your
draws today. For me, draws fall in two main categories.
There's period draws and regular draws. Let's talk about period
draws for a second. Period draws typically need to fall,
you know, in a couple of descriptors. Number one, Period
draws tend to be darker color, right, because you want
(19:54):
your period draws to be able to handle it if
there's a period mishap. I don't play around where ring
white or lavender or yellow underwear during my period on
to play around with that. You just go ahead and
stay with underwear that's black, that's navy. You know, you
want to just stay in that sort of dark colors vicinity. Also,
(20:18):
I know that some people who have periods do this.
I know that some people have periods they wear cheeky
draws and thongs and things on their periods. I'm not
one of those people. Okay, when I am on my period,
I need draws that cover both of my booty cheeks.
I need full coverage. In my situations, I need full coverage.
(20:41):
I don't mind if I can pull those draws up
over my belly. That's I really need the comfort. When
you're on your period, you have enough to worry about.
You don't need to be worried about if your draws
are like nipping at your booty cheeks or nipping in
some other places. You don't want them to nip, you know.
You just want to be focused on not doing damage
(21:04):
to anyone or anything while you're on your period. So
for me, it's comfortable draws of darker hues. You know,
that's what you need. Then you have the larger category
of the period, well, the panties you wear when you're
not on your period, the panties you wear for the
rest of the month. Okay, under that category can fall
(21:24):
quite a few things. You may have some thongs there,
You may have some kind of cute panties, you know,
you may have some sexy panties in there. You may
have panties that don't cause wedgies. Yes, I said it, wedgies.
And I want to give a shout out to black
women on Twitter for hipping me to the brand. Soma
(21:45):
on this because they so far are the best pair
of underwear I've bought where you put them on and
they just stay on your booty cheeks versus going into
the crack. You don't want that. You don't want that.
It's a bad experience. I don't like to have to
keep tugging on my underwear during the day. You know,
I have enough to deal with. I don't need the
(22:05):
rest of that, all right, And I think it's good
to have all these different categories of underwear. But I'm
going to tell you what I've been talking with my
girlfriends about that led to this episode. I was talking
to them about which is really this is this is
a conversation that's about underwear, which then is a conversation
about bodies, right, and is a conversation even about our
(22:27):
relationship to our bodies, to our clothing, to what size
we think we should be, to what we think we
should be wearing right. And in my life, I'm trying
to really unlearn a lot of those should And so
I was telling some girlfriends recently, you know, I have
a size of underwear that is my typical size. Lately,
(22:48):
I have started buying a size up or two sizes
up from my underwear size. And I'll tell you why.
Number One, I have accepted, like many, if you have
this experience too, that I'm just gonna have times where
my weight might fluctuate. You know. Sometimes that may be
like a hormonal thing. It may be medication I'm taking.
(23:10):
It may just be that my body is out here,
you know, living her best life. She surviveing, she thrive in,
she doing whatever she can do for herself, you know.
But I have decided that I'm not going to suffer
underwear that pinches me in places that I don't want
to be pinched, you know. And so if it brings
me comfort to buy some underwear that's two sizes above
(23:31):
the size that I might normally buy, what would stop
me from doing that? It would be hard for me
to do that if I have in my mind the
size that I think I should wear, or the type
of underwear that I think I should be in. And
when you start sort of getting rid of those shoulds
and really get down to being able to think about
(23:52):
what would make me feel good, what would make me
feel comfortable? You know. I think also when we're thinking
about our bodies and our relationship to clothing, whether we're
talking about our undergarments, which is clothing that a lot
of people don't see us in, or whether we're talking
about the stuff that we wear that people would see
us in, you know, when we're out for a walk,
(24:12):
out in the store, or out with our friends or whatever.
You know, I think that it also becomes this conversation
to have of accepting the body that I'm in and
instead of feeling instead of wearing things that make me
feel like, now, this pair of underwear is unaccommodating for me,
(24:32):
you know, like we all have different shape, different size,
you know, different things that make us feel good, right,
And I don't want to have to wear underwear that
is not going to accommodate for my full booty over here,
you know. I want underwear that's going to accommodate for
my belly, you know, for the corn bread that I've
eaten that I loved, for the biscuits I've had, you
(24:54):
know what I mean. And I think that there is
some importance to instead of wearing underwear that makes us
feel bad about our bodies or bad about ourselves, you know,
finding ways even for the undergarments that maybe a few
people see or maybe you only see that it's important
(25:15):
for you to feel good in those underwear that you wear.
So if you know the normal air quotes, normal or
typical underwear brand or underwear sizing that you buy doesn't
accommodate for your hips, or your belly, or your booty
or whatever, you know, find the underwear that does, so
(25:35):
that you can be whatever you want to be in
your underwear. So you can be comfortable, so you can
be sexy, so you can be sporty. So that's been
a really good tip for me so far is whenever
I place an order. Sometimes I do this for clothing too.
But if I order some underwear to order, order a
size up, order two sizes up. If I want, maybe
for you, you need to order a size down, or
(25:57):
you need to order through your four sizes up. You
want to have a variety of sizes so as your
weight may fluctuate, you have the clothing that welcomes the
body you're in. I think that is what's most important.
And yes, it is a priority for me that my
underwear covers both of my booty cheeks. It is an
important thing that I like, and I am making that
(26:20):
a top of the list in my underwear requests. So
ask yourself this, what kind of underwear makes you feel sexy?
What kind of underwear makes you feel beautiful? What kind
of underwear makes you feel comfortable? What kind of underwear
can you find that makes room for your body right now?
As your body is ugh? I love to think of that.
(26:43):
And you know, I've thought a lot about the word
comfortable lately. In my previous sessions with my counselor, she
has brought up the word comfort a lot. She has
asked me to ponder, you know, what is something that
would bring you comfort right now? What are the spaces
you go in that bring you comfort? Who are the
(27:04):
people that bring you comfort when you spend time with
them or talk to them? And I think the word
comfortable has gotten a bad rap, particularly in the scope
of underwear. Right when I was growing up, we called
comfortable underwear granny panties, right as if you know, first
of all, as if grannies don't wear sexy panties too
(27:24):
if they want. But also, you know, we were just
sort of making it seem like at some point in
your life you will sort of age out of being
concerned about whatever. And then to many of us we
were sort of being taught this implicit lesson that to
look for comfort was bad. You know that as women,
(27:45):
it's our job to look good and wear this type
of shoes and this type of outfit and this type
of underwear because that's what air quotes women are supposed
to do, which means women are just supposed to be
uncomfortable all the time, and that just isn't true. And
thankfully things have changed a lot since I was growing up.
There are more colors of underwear that actually represent people
(28:08):
who have my type of skin tone. There are more
types of underwear for all sorts of bodies, and we've
still got a long way to go. We've got a
long way to go so that any body that anyone
has can be not only well represented in what we
see in the media and fashion, but also that the
(28:29):
type of underwear that anybody wants and loves to have
can actually be available to them however their body is shaped,
whatever their size, whatever their height, whatever their skin tone.
There've been a lot of improvements, and we've got a
long way to go. In the meantime, think about you,
Get you some underwear that make you feel good. Get
(28:49):
you some underwear if you like this like me that
covers both of your booty cheeks. See y'all in the
living room next time. Her with Amina Brown is produced
(29:12):
by Matt Owen for Solbraffeedy Productions as a part of
the Seneca Women Podcast Network and partnership with iHeartRadio. Thanks
for listening and don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review
the podcast.
Everybody, Welcome back to a new episode of Her with
Amina Brown, and I am your host, Amina Brown, and
the topic of this episode was not intended to be
correlated to the number of this episode, but the title
is correct. We are going to discuss why I think
(00:53):
it's important that I should have underwear that covers both
of my booty cheeks. And maybe you feel the same way,
but I wasn't doing that because so number is sixty nine.
And if that joke doesn't make any sense to you,
let's go on to the next thing. So, I, first
of all, have talked to a couple of girlfriends recently
about just my current thoughts on the importance of my underwear.
(01:14):
I'm not gonna be talking as much about bras today.
I think I will do a separate episode regarding that.
Today we're going to focus on underwear. We're gonna focus
on draws. We're gonna focus on panties or whatever you
call your underwear or your draws. All three of those
terms will be interchangeable for me during this episode. It's
interesting because part of what brought up this idea that
(01:35):
I was like, I'm gonna take this into her living room.
We're all gonna bring our hummus and our partially cut
up green peppers and talk about this. I was talking
to a couple of girlfriends recently about how my relationship
to my underwear is changing, which is probably about a
bigger discussion of where my body is changing, and that
(01:55):
is changing my relationship to how I want to feel
in my clothing. Right. But before we get into that,
I want to talk about what I was told growing
up about underwear. And it's interesting to think about this,
right because I've talked on this podcast before about how
I grew up in church, grew up in a very
strict conservative environment. And when I say conservative, I don't
(02:17):
just mean politically, although there may have been some ways
it was that it was a conservative environment politically, but
I mean conservative in the sense of, you know, wanting
you to wear clothing where you know pretty much it
was going to be you know, your body was going
to be covered, and particularly covered around genitalia, breasts, you know,
like obviously booty, all those things. Want all of that
(02:42):
to be covered up and not be seen or be
close to being seen. Right, And in addition to that,
we also want the clothing you wear to not be
so tight that those things are more easily seen or
air quotes imagined right, which you know, takes us down
a road of purity culture. And you may not be
(03:05):
familiar with that if that wasn't something that you grew
up with. But in a lot of Christian churches and
Christian communities, there was this idea that sexual purity was
very much related to how you dressed, what you wore,
and the bulk of the pressure of remaining air quotes
pure was put on girls or women right in order
(03:26):
to make sure they were not air quotes temptations to men.
So I was definitely growing up in an environment like that.
I sang in the choir at church, and at least
one or two Sundays of the month, the choir wore
black and white, and in my church's case, that meant
that women wore black skirts. So I don't remember us
(03:48):
being able to wear black pants. I remember it was
black skirts, black pantyhose, black shoes, and then you'd wear
a white blouse and there was a lot of conversation,
believe it or not, around what kind of undergarment you
should be wearing under your white blouse. Or on Easter,
we would actually dress in all white in the choir,
(04:10):
So then it was a discussion among the women in
the choir of what undergarments were presentable to wear underneath
your white dress. My mom raised me that if you're
wearing white, that I should wear black undergarments. Of course,
this is before the current time that we're living in, y'all,
(04:30):
where now underwear and undergarments are being made in nude
colors that are actually nude for most people that have
like different shades of nude. But when I was growing up,
nude was beige, So that wasn't going to help you
if you were brown skin or darker. Whereas now you
(04:53):
have a lot more options, those weren't there then you
basically had white, beige slash nude air quotes or black.
And so my mom would always say, if you're wearing white,
you should wear black undergarments. That way, no one can
see your bra or anything through you, know, whatever you're wearing.
I also want to bring up an old school term
(05:14):
that I haven't heard anyone say in a long time,
which is a slip. And if you grew up in
a church setting, and I want to speak particular to you,
if you grew up in a black church setting. Then
you grew up either wearing a slip at some point
in your life, or the other women that you were
around were wearing slips. Some of you are like, what
is a slip? A slip is a satiny garment that
(05:39):
could be a half slip. I should have had my
grandma owned to talk about this. A half slip was
basically something you wore that was like a satiny material
that was the same length as your skirt or your dress,
but it created this extra layer so that if someone
were to look at you, they couldn't see the un
(06:00):
to wear that you were wearing underneath your dress. And
there were such things as full slips, which had straps
and you know, had like the shape for your breast
to go, and then they went down into the skirt
similar to the half slip, right, And then if you
wore just the top part, somehow that was considered to
(06:20):
be a camusol that was not considered to be a
half slip, even though technically it was. So these were
all garments that I became really familiar with when I
was growing up because in order to be dressed for
church and to try to air quotes, dress modestly and
all of that, you would wear all these different layers,
you know, under everything, And did that give me a
(06:44):
certain kind of complex about my body? I'm pretty sure.
I'm pretty sure it gave all of us this sort
of feeling that as girls growing up, and then as
we became adults as women, this sort of idea of
how much of our do we have to hide or
disguise in some way? And I do remember it was
(07:06):
interesting when I started singing in the choir that a
lot of the choir leadership would tell us as women
that we should be wearing white slips, we should be
wearing white undergarments, bras included, and that was like never
a usual that was not a usual thing from my mom.
So I remember my first Sunday singing in the choir,
(07:27):
I had on this white kind of rayon blouse and
then I had on I was young, y'all, I was
probably twelve or thirteen, my first time singing in the choir.
So I had on this rayon kind of blouse, short sleeve,
button up blouse, and then I had on my little bra,
which is probably still very much like a little training
(07:47):
bra basically, and then my mom had bought me a
black kind of silky or satiny camusol to wear underneath it.
And one of the missionaries at the church, because our
church had all these different like leadership positions, right, So
there were deacons, there were missionaries, ministers, and elders, right.
(08:12):
And some of you may hear the term missionary and
think about people who you go and they travel places
to share the Christian religion in those communities. And I
think that may have been true over some of some
of the missionaries in our church, but I think they
were more locally doing some types of community work. That
was always my assumption. Anyways. So one of the missionaries,
(08:34):
I didn't know her well at all. I knew her name,
but I don't know that we'd ever had like a
full fledged conversation. And she came up to me to
ask me about if I was wearing a bra under
my shirt. After the service had ended that day, she
asked me, and I said, yes, that I was wearing
(08:57):
a bra. And I explained to her what I said
to y'all that I was wearing a camasol, and she
told me, well, you should wear white so that we know,
like this is a wild thing, so that we know
you're wearing undergarments. So that was a wild time of
life because on the one hand, I'm being told as
a girl to sort of try to hide my body,
(09:18):
to try to hide my breast, hide my hips, hide
my booty, hide everything that that could cause me to
be sexualized by a boy or a man. Right. And
then at the same time I'm being told, well, it's
(09:38):
not just that we want you to hide those things. Well,
now we want you to wear a certain kind of
slip or top or whatever under there that shows us
you're wearing your undergarments. Right. So it was this very strange,
like disparate message to get and that sort of gave
(10:03):
me kind of weird thoughts about the purpose or the
goal of underwear. And I think that taught me growing up. Well,
obviously my undergarments are in some way performative for other people,
but very specifically in that environment, they're performative for boys
or men. It's either that I need to be worried
(10:25):
that what I wear is air quotes tantalizing to them,
or I need to do my best to hide everything
so that they won't be tempted, or I need to
wear something that shows I'm wearing something so that they
won't be tempted terrible. I do remember by the time
I got through high school and got into college, this
(10:50):
was around the era of It was kind of that
time of college where maybe I'm trying to think was
I a junior by them. I don't think so. So
I think it was maybe my first year or so,
coming back home from school. I really can't remember the
all the way full details of this, but what I
remember the most is that I was out with one
(11:13):
of my best friends, Adrian, and we had gone shopping.
I feel like we were later in college at this time.
I feel like we'd gotten to the point in college
where you're starting to do interviews for internships or summer jobs,
things like this. And this is when the store The
Limited was very popular. I might be telling my age
(11:33):
to say that store, but shout out to you if
you remember this. The Limited was a very popular store,
and that was sort of where when you were in
your early twenties, that was where you got your first
sort of business attire. And wide leg pants were very
very popular, and so I was thinking, man, I needed
to get like some underwear to make here we go again,
(11:56):
y'all with the I need to get some underwear to
not show that I'm wearing underwear. So I bought this
thong when I was out with Adrian, my first time
ever buying that, and came home and put the bag
in the laundry room and then I left out to
(12:17):
go back and hang out with my friends. I remember
getting home and my mom was like I walked in
the house and she was like, what you need this for?
Who you're wearing this for? And I was like, we
just went interviewed panty line, like it was such a
big deal then for your pantyline not to show. So
(12:39):
that was the purpose of wearing a thong, was so
that you would still air quotes have on underwear. But
now it can look like you don't have on underwear
because you don't have the pantylines on your booty cheeks. Right,
So my mom and I had a whole talk, and
basically that thong got confiscated and I can't tell you
where it's at today. Not only did my mom confiscate
(12:59):
that thong, she brought me a pair of some bloomers
that she had and she handed me those, like here,
if you worried about your pantelon wear, those actually, I'm
not gonna lie though that I have to give a
small shout out to my mom because I'm like, wow,
is that basically the type of underwear I wear now? Anyways?
So all that to say, I sort of like went
(13:20):
away from the thought of cute or sexy underwear at
that point, and now I had the bloomers, so I
didn't really need the thong. I think later a mentor
like figure of mine bought me a couple of thongs
when she just helped me like get an outfit for
an event, if I remember right, And so I had
(13:42):
thongs because she bought them, but it took me many
years before I ever bought my own like thong like underwear.
And I do think we all sort of go through
some type of underwear evolution. A part of that, obviously,
it is because you know, when we're growing up in
our families, our family have a way they purchased things,
they have, you know, whatever budget it is, you know,
(14:04):
so you just kind of are accepting whatever you're given.
For some of you, those may have been you know,
hand me downs right in your family if you weren't
the oldest kid. And for some of you that may
have been a particular store that you remember going to
because that's what your family could afford. And then you
get to a point where you become an adult yourself.
You're you're now responsible for buying your own underwear. And
(14:26):
so I think I was probably in my like early
to mid twenties when I was starting to buy all
this stuff for myself, you know, having my own job
and all that, and realizing like, okay, well I like
to go to Target. That's a pretty easy place I
can go and get Hanes or through the Loom underwear there.
But then they also had their sort of Target brand
(14:47):
underwear that were like, you know, for me and the
budget I was on, they were very nice. So I
was like, this is great. And then by the time
I got into my mid to late twenties, I started
to think more about what does you know, sort of
a grown ass woman's underwear drawer look like, you know,
(15:08):
because up to that point my underwear had been very functional. Really,
I wasn't as concerned about cuteness or anything. And I
feel like I was reading some articles about, you know,
things that like every woman should have in her wardrobe
type articles, and they were talking about how, you know,
(15:28):
as a grown woman, you should have matching bra and
panties sets. I had never bought bra and panties together. Never.
I never done that. I would just go to the
(15:54):
store and get underwear if I was, you know, running
out or whatever. And then I don't even know. I
was buying my bras for a while, and probably some
of my bras even into my twenties, my mom or
my grandma was buying for me for my birthday or
Christmas or whatever, you know. So I was like, Okay,
you're supposed to buy a matching set together. Wow, okay,
(16:15):
And that is what sent me to Victoria's Secret. Victoria's
Secret was sort of my entry level point into underwear
that I thought would be cute. I think I was,
first of all, you know, looking to just have cute
underwear and cute underwear that matched with the bras that
I was buying, right. I do think by the time
I got in my late twenties, I was looking to
(16:37):
have sexy underwear. I was not looking to have sexy
underwear or cute underwear because anyone was seeing them, mind you,
because no one was seeing them. But as I was
getting older and getting more comfortable in my own skin,
you know, I wanted to have some underwear that I liked,
and I think as I got into my late twenties,
(16:59):
I wanted to have some underwear that made me feel sexy,
you know, And so that sent me to Victoria's Secret
and the whole concept of getting measured for your bras
and underwears. I will talk about bras fully in another episode, y'all,
but getting measured for bras was a very fascinating time.
And then you're figuring out what your actual underwear sizes,
(17:21):
and then going into Victoria's Secret and being like, man,
there are a lot of different types of underwear, you know,
Like Victoria's Secret had thongs and bikinis, and they had
boy shorts and high leg high waist. I mean, there
(17:41):
were a lot of There were a lot more choices
there than I was used to, you know, experiencing and target.
And I really loved that underwear evolution for me of
sort of starting to make the choices for myself for
what I like to have on for what makes me
feel good. I got married in my early thirds, and
like many folks when they get married, I had sort
(18:04):
of two separate bridal showers, if I remember, right, I
had one that was more like the household stuff that
people give you. First of all, the time period of
getting married for straight people can be very fascinating as
far as the tradition's there, Like somehow the groom just
(18:25):
gets to like be out and about somewhere, but you
are the one expected to be there for all those
castroll dishes, like both of y'all aren't going to use them,
Like all that stuff is put on the woman in
that scenario, and it's just a very wild tradition that
we have there. But I had a broader shower like
that where you're sort of getting all your housewares. That's
typically the bridle shower that you invite your mother and
(18:45):
your mother in law, your grandmother, your aunts and people
like that. That's the one that you invite them to
because you don't want your friend to buy you like
a vibrator, and you're opening that in front of your
mom and your mother in law, right. And then I
had a separate shower that was friends only. That was
all the lingerie, all the sexy underwear for everything. And
(19:08):
even now that my husband and I have been married,
you know over ten years now, you know, I think
the best place for me, of whatever type of sexy
underwear I want to have, should still start with what
makes me feel sexy, what makes me feel good? You know.
So let's talk about where I am with draws today,
(19:30):
and you two think about where you are with your
draws today. For me, draws fall in two main categories.
There's period draws and regular draws. Let's talk about period
draws for a second. Period draws typically need to fall,
you know, in a couple of descriptors. Number one, Period
draws tend to be darker color, right, because you want
(19:54):
your period draws to be able to handle it if
there's a period mishap. I don't play around where ring
white or lavender or yellow underwear during my period on
to play around with that. You just go ahead and
stay with underwear that's black, that's navy. You know, you
want to just stay in that sort of dark colors vicinity. Also,
(20:18):
I know that some people who have periods do this.
I know that some people have periods they wear cheeky
draws and thongs and things on their periods. I'm not
one of those people. Okay, when I am on my period,
I need draws that cover both of my booty cheeks.
I need full coverage. In my situations, I need full coverage.
(20:41):
I don't mind if I can pull those draws up
over my belly. That's I really need the comfort. When
you're on your period, you have enough to worry about.
You don't need to be worried about if your draws
are like nipping at your booty cheeks or nipping in
some other places. You don't want them to nip, you know.
You just want to be focused on not doing damage
(21:04):
to anyone or anything while you're on your period. So
for me, it's comfortable draws of darker hues. You know,
that's what you need. Then you have the larger category
of the period, well, the panties you wear when you're
not on your period, the panties you wear for the
rest of the month. Okay, under that category can fall
(21:24):
quite a few things. You may have some thongs there,
You may have some kind of cute panties, you know,
you may have some sexy panties in there. You may
have panties that don't cause wedgies. Yes, I said it, wedgies.
And I want to give a shout out to black
women on Twitter for hipping me to the brand. Soma
(21:45):
on this because they so far are the best pair
of underwear I've bought where you put them on and
they just stay on your booty cheeks versus going into
the crack. You don't want that. You don't want that.
It's a bad experience. I don't like to have to
keep tugging on my underwear during the day. You know,
I have enough to deal with. I don't need the
(22:05):
rest of that, all right, And I think it's good
to have all these different categories of underwear. But I'm
going to tell you what I've been talking with my
girlfriends about that led to this episode. I was talking
to them about which is really this is this is
a conversation that's about underwear, which then is a conversation
about bodies, right, and is a conversation even about our
(22:27):
relationship to our bodies, to our clothing, to what size
we think we should be, to what we think we
should be wearing right. And in my life, I'm trying
to really unlearn a lot of those should And so
I was telling some girlfriends recently, you know, I have
a size of underwear that is my typical size. Lately,
(22:48):
I have started buying a size up or two sizes
up from my underwear size. And I'll tell you why.
Number One, I have accepted, like many, if you have
this experience too, that I'm just gonna have times where
my weight might fluctuate. You know. Sometimes that may be
like a hormonal thing. It may be medication I'm taking.
(23:10):
It may just be that my body is out here,
you know, living her best life. She surviveing, she thrive in,
she doing whatever she can do for herself, you know.
But I have decided that I'm not going to suffer
underwear that pinches me in places that I don't want
to be pinched, you know. And so if it brings
me comfort to buy some underwear that's two sizes above
(23:31):
the size that I might normally buy, what would stop
me from doing that? It would be hard for me
to do that if I have in my mind the
size that I think I should wear, or the type
of underwear that I think I should be in. And
when you start sort of getting rid of those shoulds
and really get down to being able to think about
(23:52):
what would make me feel good, what would make me
feel comfortable? You know. I think also when we're thinking
about our bodies and our relationship to clothing, whether we're
talking about our undergarments, which is clothing that a lot
of people don't see us in, or whether we're talking
about the stuff that we wear that people would see
us in, you know, when we're out for a walk,
(24:12):
out in the store, or out with our friends or whatever.
You know, I think that it also becomes this conversation
to have of accepting the body that I'm in and
instead of feeling instead of wearing things that make me
feel like, now, this pair of underwear is unaccommodating for me,
(24:32):
you know, like we all have different shape, different size,
you know, different things that make us feel good, right,
And I don't want to have to wear underwear that
is not going to accommodate for my full booty over here,
you know. I want underwear that's going to accommodate for
my belly, you know, for the corn bread that I've
eaten that I loved, for the biscuits I've had, you
(24:54):
know what I mean. And I think that there is
some importance to instead of wearing underwear that makes us
feel bad about our bodies or bad about ourselves, you know,
finding ways even for the undergarments that maybe a few
people see or maybe you only see that it's important
(25:15):
for you to feel good in those underwear that you wear.
So if you know the normal air quotes, normal or
typical underwear brand or underwear sizing that you buy doesn't
accommodate for your hips, or your belly, or your booty
or whatever, you know, find the underwear that does, so
(25:35):
that you can be whatever you want to be in
your underwear. So you can be comfortable, so you can
be sexy, so you can be sporty. So that's been
a really good tip for me so far is whenever
I place an order. Sometimes I do this for clothing too.
But if I order some underwear to order, order a
size up, order two sizes up. If I want, maybe
for you, you need to order a size down, or
(25:57):
you need to order through your four sizes up. You
want to have a variety of sizes so as your
weight may fluctuate, you have the clothing that welcomes the
body you're in. I think that is what's most important.
And yes, it is a priority for me that my
underwear covers both of my booty cheeks. It is an
important thing that I like, and I am making that
(26:20):
a top of the list in my underwear requests. So
ask yourself this, what kind of underwear makes you feel sexy?
What kind of underwear makes you feel beautiful? What kind
of underwear makes you feel comfortable? What kind of underwear
can you find that makes room for your body right now?
As your body is ugh? I love to think of that.
(26:43):
And you know, I've thought a lot about the word
comfortable lately. In my previous sessions with my counselor, she
has brought up the word comfort a lot. She has
asked me to ponder, you know, what is something that
would bring you comfort right now? What are the spaces
you go in that bring you comfort? Who are the
(27:04):
people that bring you comfort when you spend time with
them or talk to them? And I think the word
comfortable has gotten a bad rap, particularly in the scope
of underwear. Right when I was growing up, we called
comfortable underwear granny panties, right as if you know, first
of all, as if grannies don't wear sexy panties too
(27:24):
if they want. But also, you know, we were just
sort of making it seem like at some point in
your life you will sort of age out of being
concerned about whatever. And then to many of us we
were sort of being taught this implicit lesson that to
look for comfort was bad. You know that as women,
(27:45):
it's our job to look good and wear this type
of shoes and this type of outfit and this type
of underwear because that's what air quotes women are supposed
to do, which means women are just supposed to be
uncomfortable all the time, and that just isn't true. And
thankfully things have changed a lot since I was growing up.
There are more colors of underwear that actually represent people
(28:08):
who have my type of skin tone. There are more
types of underwear for all sorts of bodies, and we've
still got a long way to go. We've got a
long way to go so that any body that anyone
has can be not only well represented in what we
see in the media and fashion, but also that the
(28:29):
type of underwear that anybody wants and loves to have
can actually be available to them however their body is shaped,
whatever their size, whatever their height, whatever their skin tone.
There've been a lot of improvements, and we've got a
long way to go. In the meantime, think about you,
Get you some underwear that make you feel good. Get
(28:49):
you some underwear if you like this like me that
covers both of your booty cheeks. See y'all in the
living room next time. Her with Amina Brown is produced
(29:12):
by Matt Owen for Solbraffeedy Productions as a part of
the Seneca Women Podcast Network and partnership with iHeartRadio. Thanks
for listening and don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review
the podcast.
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