The celebrity magazine heat probably has it snappiest when it calls them, in its cover story, the ”no-knicker girls”. They are describing famous girls who go to parties without knickers on, see. They go out, get photographed by the paparazzi — usually as they are getting into a car — and reveal everything. I always smell a rat when someone remarks on a trend, and it turns out that this trend amounts to Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan. Hilton and Lohan are attention-seekers. Nothing they do will amount to a trend, because the only reason they are doing it is in the hope that nobody else will do it and then they will get more attention. Spears, meanwhile, is going through a vulnerable time. She will do anything Hilton tells her is cool.
However, the commando (not wearing underwear) business is not limited to this garish trio. Jemima Khan and Kate Moss were both snapped getting into a car. Helen Mirren also let the air in under her Oscars dress, for reasons of line, probably.
I do not find this information titillating. It reminds me of the weird tights my mum used to wear, with hoop-like holes round the top, to overcome her feelings of pantyhose-claustrophobia without running the risk of being sexy. You probably think this is an age thing — and I can no longer conceive of Mirren as a sexual being simply because she’s not 25 — but before you put pen to paper, yes, she is a million times sexier than I will ever be, and this is not an age thing, it is an English thing. English people don’t need air, for heaven’s sake. They would catch a chill. They have no understanding of the line of a couture gown.
There is another brand of English pantlessness, epitomised by Kate Beckinsale, who once said, ”I don’t take drugs and I’ve never been drunk. But if you were to ask me if I were wearing knickers, I would have to say ‘no’.” The woman makes me nauseous, but I don’t think that is tainting my judgement when I say, doesn’t this say it all? About that coy, boarding-schooly, ”Ooh, sexy? You mean me? Little tiny me, a riot of sexy mischief? But I don’t understand, I’m such a good girl!”
Oh. An unbidden wave of nausea. I am going to have to put my head between my legs. Don’t worry, I do have knickers on. And tights. Anyway, Beckinsale, Mirren and my mum are variants of the English way and they have been doing this for years. The nouvelle vogue of American under-nudes is altogether different.
I have read sundry American bloggers taking this as a straightforward come-on, especially in the case of Spears. They claim she is ”advertising her single status”. Hilton and Lohan, meanwhile, are purportedly doing that postmodern slag-signifier thing, where you pretend to be available to absolutely everyone and yet, at the same time, pretend to hate promiscuity and all it stands for — though you would not for a second want to be pinned down on what it did represent. I do not buy this — I think the missing undercrackers signify something more than ”I like the waft of air”, but I do not think they signify ”Come, take me, take me.”
For a start, these women have all had a lot more than a discreet Brazilian wax — they are not even porn-bald, they are coot-bald. Sure, they were not expecting anyone to shove a camera up there — although some claim that the whole trend was premeditated attention-seeking — but still, if you were simply looking to put out a sexual message, from ”I’m up for it” to ”I’m sickened by it, but I take a curious pleasure from simulating engagement”, I don’t think you would do so looking so raw. It is too gritty; you can see Britney’s Caesarean scar, for God’s sake. This is sex kitten as rendered by Ken Loach; it is hard to look at and there are dark times ahead.
And yet at the same time, I don’t really see it as subversive and certainly not as a feminist statement. So I wonder if it is just an extension of the back-message, as originated about six years ago by the red-carpet hegemony of the backless gown. It is not an erogenous zone, the back, or if it is, it is pretty special-interest. The message of this was asexual: ”I am now so thin that it doesn’t matter which bit I show you. There’s no deliberation! Every bit is as thin as every other bit!”
The no-knickers thing could be more of that ”I am so fleshless that I need no girdling. Ha, you over there, you with the pants on! I’ll bet you have support tights, also. You cannot be in my gang!”
In tandem with this, it could be a move farther in the thong-direction. Once upon a time, the thong was a big thing. You flashed it over the top of your jeans, you were cool. Now everybody’s doing it. To stay ahead of the curve, your thongs have to get either bigger or smaller. Bigger, and it’s all too easy to mistake you for a square. Smaller, and they will eventually just disappear up somewhere.
Or it might be standard-issue rule-breaking. What’s the first rule of getting dressed? Start with your knickers and bra. These people have not worn bras for years. The pants are the first and last rule left to break. I wonder if rule-breaking this determined and anti-authoritarian actually makes up, fleetingly, for not being a feminist. Of course not. And Helen Mirren, besides . . . what would the Queen say! After all that gushing! She thought you two were friends. — Â