‘To floss, or not to floss?” That is the question doing the rounds in the lingerie world. The tabloids are having a field day splashing pert posteriors across their pages. And women’s glossies are devoting space to the gospel according to Kylie Minogue, High Priestess of the Order of Pop and Panty. We’re being told the G-string is out — that the underwear of the moment is a nice pair of ”full” knickers.
Presumably, by this she means a barely there, sexy, frilly pair. And not the sensible, beige-coloured, elasticised at the leg, three-for-the-price-of-one number: at whose mere mention we local girls have palpitations of nostalgia. Enter the ”broekie”.
”Don’t forget to wash your broekie!” Which local lass doesn’t remember, age five, standing over the bathtub with a firm, gleaming bar of Sunlight, doing her feminine duty. Back in my day, a broekie was always made of cotton, had exotic names like ”tanga”, came only in beige or with little pink flowers, and could be bought in a shiny plastic sleeve from the local department store. One could never have enough of them, a point illustrated by just how many such plastic sleeves one got for Christmas. Yet this had a purpose. Broekies lost their elasticity and colour from all that hand washing. Sometimes they even got holes and needed darning. Which, naturally, just wouldn’t do.
According to my mother, there could be no greater abomination than having an unsightly broekie at the wrong time. Like if you were knocked down by a car. It was drummed into my head, and often gave me nightmares, that the attending doctor would be aghast if I had an unbecoming undergarment, and would think I came from a bad home. Maybe he wouldn’t even treat me, and simply pack his black bag and go on his disgusted way.
Which is why, decades later, when I came to in a hospital after a car crash, all I could think about was whether the paramedics had managed, in between rescuscitating me, to have a good look at my broekie. Not that I would wear as outlandish an item as a broekie, of course (ahem).
A lot of etiquette was devoted to this arcane world. The type of broekie one wore was said to be the fount from which one’s personality flowed. Which could explain why, at convent schools, there are said to be as rigorous an inspection of girls’ broekies as there is of the rest of the dress code.
Presumably, too risqué a pair of knickers would be a danger sign of a potential strumpet. At my convent school, the broekie of preference was in the school colours — black with red trim. A friend was not so lucky — the nuns at her school made sure the girls wore a broekie in toad-green.
Actually, I know of people who’ve become broekie inspectors.
And just like a person’s shoes, knickers speak volumes. Visitors go to the hostess’s bathroom just to catch a glimpse of a pair of knickers drying behind the door. It is inevitable that they then go on to make wild speculations about that person’s love life. I’m not free of this scourge.
For instance, I knew it was downhill with the girlfriend of a male friend of mine when I once noticed in their bathroom a trio of neat, beige, cotton broekies hung out to dry on the towel rail. Generally, a broekie wearer wears shoes with a low heel, doesn’t stay out late or get drunk in the week, works in a bank or bookstore, and shags for procreation only.
Frankly, full knickers are the antipodes of all that is sexy, trendy or otherwise. Which is why what is good for the cellulite-challenged Miss Minogue is not necessarily a welcome trend for the rest of us. The G-string may have lost its lustre for her, but some of us prefer to wobble on in our gelatinous glory. The alternative, the ”b-word”, is a far greater horror.