Thing a Little Thong

This cheerful little rhyme varies a bit, depending, perhaps, on one's geographic location: others, particularly those not living in either London nor France, were taught to recite Goodness gracious, I declare, I see someone's underwear!

(The variation, to digress a bit, is akin to the song about the diminishing number of bottles of beer on the wall: I believe the people who were raised to sing the following line "If one of those bottles should happen to fall" slightly outnumber those who sing "Take one down, pass it around," who in turn overshadow those lucky enough never to encounter that horrible song in the first place.)

In less polite circles they are referred to as Butt Floss. A few decades ago they were known as G-strings, worn solely by strippers. Today, they're the latest thing in girls' underwear.

They haven't yet caught on with boys because boys are still caught up in the hip-hop style of baggy jeans hanging below the waist to display brightly patterned boxer shorts (the fashion statement clearly being spank me). Plus, boys, I think (in fact I know), have a lower tolerance for pain than girls. In fact, the whole advantage of being male is getting to wear relatively uncomplicated attire, inner and outer.

Girls wearing thong bikinis to school dances has become such an issue that checkpoints have been established, most notoriously a few years ago at prom time in a high school near San Diego: girls were required to expose themselves semi-publicly before being granted admission; thong wearers were sent home. Many parents complained, and "Checkpoint Charlotte," the administrator who instigated this I-see-London-I-see-France policy, was ultimately dismissed over what was deemed an error in judgment. If the kids had any style, this year they'd rebel by wearing big baggy bloomers or grandpa-style union suits under their formals.

Apparently, thong undies are even being peddled to little girls, six- and seven-year-olds. Well, that's easily dealt with. After all, the youngsters aren't buying these things for themselves. (Nowadays, most kids already have their own car by the time they're old enough to buy their own underwear.) Sometimes you have to wonder about parents' judgment regarding underwear. Years ago, "America's Funniest Home Videos"--a television series I consider a hate crime--featured a girl perhaps 10 years old, wearing a dress, jumping rope under her panties fell down. (I'm not making this up.) From the wad of material at the child's ankles, you could tell it was her mother's (or older sister's) underwear; someone in that family must have talked the child into putting them on ("Come on, honey, it'll be fun! And the top prize is $10,000!") and go out on the driveway to be videotaped dropping her drawers for national TV (to say nothing of the neighbors). I hope they've since found a good therapist for her. (She didn't even win! The winning video, I recall, was of a skier smacking into a tree.)

But as I say, thong panties make relatively few appearances--if appearances is the word I want--on males. An exception is the movie The Full Monty, in which unemployed Englishmen put on a strip show to raise needed cash. As these men are of "average" body types (it's our lot that skanty bikinis coincided with "Dulce de Leche" ice cream), the thongs don't "do" much for them. Later, when the film was adapted as a stage musical, it became downright grotesque. It's no secret that performers in musicals wear body mikes which are almost, but not quite, concealed by their costumes. (Often you'll see the cords dribbling down the actors' backs, making them look like robots.) In the scene in The Full Monty where the men had to strip down to try on their thongs, the mike consoles were stuffed down the front of their underwear. (You'd think, considering everything, that the added bulk would have, you know, worked to their, shall we say, advantage, but if you didn't see the show, trust me, with the cords emerging from their waistbands and everything, it made them look a little like a hernia in progress.) I hate to think what they did for Oh! Calcutta! where the performers came on nude and stayed that way throughout.

Men who don't make their living in musical comedy may be able to get away with wearing a thong if they're young and slim and well-built and not too hairy--or at least acquainted with a good depilatory (the Abercrombie & Fitch model type who would look "buff" wearing a circus tent). Or Sasha Baron Cohen, whose shtick has more to do with scanty attire than the sociopolitical satire inherent in his films. But us guys are unfortunately prone to tug at our clothing where it gets uncomfortable, which may be hard to do politely in public. If you're a go-go boy (or girl), however, a thong is just the thing; the audience needs someplace to insert those tips, which after all is a significant portion of one's income in that particular line of work. (And let's face it, there are more degrading ways to make a living fully dressed.)

And what about the classic warning about wearing nice underwear in case you're hit by a car? That happened to me once (you always remember clearly the moment you become a cliché): a drunk driver crashed the light as I was crossing the street. Broke my collarbone, cracked three ribs, and necessitated several stitches above my eyebrow (my head bounced off the guy's windshield) which resulted in a rather dashing (if I say so myself) dueling-wound type scar; it was three years before I could sleep on my left side. (If anyone had been taping the event, we could have sent it to "America's Funniest Home Videos" and hoped that my share of the inevitable winnings would be enough to pay the hospital bill.) But my undergarments were impeccable. Let that be a lesson to all you be-thonged prom-bound girls out there.