At Home With Your A-List Underwear
At Home With Your A-List Underwear
I’ve been working from home full-time for two weeks now, and if it’s one thing I appreciate it’s that everyday can now be an A-list underwear day. Ladies, you know there are tiers to your underwear drawer. Shall we go through them?
There is the D-list: these are thongs you are never going to wear again because you are not twenty and don’t give a crap about underwear lines. Also, that feeling of having your crotch flossed by poly-cotton blends was a trauma you don’t need to repeat. Still, you keep them because what if you suddenly need to seduce your husband because he’s doing all the childcare/homeschooling/child-neglecting for the both of you?
The C-list is period underwear. If you realized in your 30’s that all period underwear should be black then you have a pile of sad, black cotton underwear in your drawer. Otherwise, you have a motley assortment of stained underwear you keep in the back of the drawer. It’s an embarrassing collection you hide, even from yourself, but definitely from others (even though who else goes in your underwear drawer? You have visions of an intruder breaking in looking for jewelry or cash or government secret and stumbling upon your period underwear and the shame is worse than the violation of being robbed.) You hate the period underwear and resent having to have it or wear it or replace it.
The B-list is the bulk of your underwear. It’s all the pairs you also hate but for unknown reasons won’t throw away. They’re either too small (and ride down your hips), too garish (no matter how cute they make neon underwear look on TV it NEVER looks good on an actual woman and ALWAYS shows through her clothes), or once was in the A-list but is now faded, stretched out and a sad reminder of its (and your) faded glory.
Among the B-list is also those random pairs you bought at Target on a whim (Unicorns are still cute for women in the 40’s!), but are clearly not for your age or body type and have never been comfortable. Some of the underwear in this group are tight around the leg holes, causing you to feel like you’re wearing a constricting diaper from the 1910’s. Some of it is some kind of experimental fabric that felt silky in the store and now just seems excessively flammable. Some of it is from when you were pregnant and dear god why haven’t you gotten rid of maternity underwear? You had your baby 8 years ago!
And then there is the A list. When you think of the A-list you get a vision of the clouds parting, some kind of children’s chorus singing (Latin hymnals of course) and the sun shining through like god herself is speaking to you. About your A list underwear.
The A-list are your newest, most elastic-forward pairs of underwear. They are crisp and fresh and are the same color as when you purchased them. The stripes still go horizontally (and don’t dip like sine curves from overstretching), the flowers are perky and the pastels have not turned to gray brown. There are no holes in A list underwear. The cotton is like al dente pasta--it’s soft, but it lets you know it’s there. It reports for duty. The lycra in the fabric is running on all cylinders. This underwear is here to serve YOU. You are doing this underwear the great privilege and honor of being chosen and worn. This underwear affirms your body and says, “We’re looking great today! And when we sit down everything will stay in place!”
Wearing A-list underwear tells you “You are every woman!”, if every woman had her choices and feelings affirmed by her undergarments.
The A-list likes your jokes. It thanks you for making dinner. It thinks you are magnificent.
Now that we’re all quarantining, and working from home, there is no reason to ever have anything but an A-list underwear day. Provided your washing machine is working, you never have to slide around in that “gift” underwear from your aunt that gets baggier as the day goes on. With the time you were commuting, you could handwash your top 5. You could even air dry them! Yes, you may be home with kids and a spouse who wants to throttle aforementioned kids. Maybe you’re grappling with an incoming Tsunami wave of financial anxiety. And maybe you’re getting fatter each day, despite your “I’m only eating 3 of these brownies today” self-promises.
The only way to get through this is to count the little things that please us and revel in those brief ripples of pleasure. For now, you’re home in your A-list underwear.