New contributor Amber Beard discusses her crisis in choosing underwear as she’s aged.
There has of late been a dilemma brewing. Nothing life threatening or earth shattering you understand but nonetheless a dilemma.
Now, I am not by nature a fashionista, nor do I suffer from the self delusion that I have the body of a 20 year old (in fact I’m not sure I have the body of a 47 year old either) and I like to think that my ‘mutton’ days are few and far if  nonexistent. I shy away from the overly tight, overly young, overly ‘fashionable’ and especially the overly synthetic. I like to think that whilst I am not necessarily yummy Mummy material, I could give a yummy Granny a run for her money. But a dilemma I have and this lies firmly in the knicker region.
I do like a nice set of underwear. Not because I’m afraid that I’ll get run over and disgrace myself a la my mother’s dire warnings but because, despite my somewhat conservative exterior, I like the notion that I can be wearing something pretty or even a bit daring and nobody knows. There is great pleasure to be had in browsing, deciding and purchasing. However of late, because of an amount of middle aged spread in the middle region, I am finding that the skimpies are just not a viable option any more. Actually, I’m not sure that they ever were particularly, but one feels at a young age that ‘barely there’ must be born stoically despite the resultant chafing and other unpalatable truths.
Having found myself looking longingly at the husband’s nice stretchy cotton boxers and thinking ‘mmm they look comfy’ I took myself off to the knicker emporium that is M&S* and bought myself some sensible pants. Before you throw your hands up in horror and think Playtex control and Bridget Jones ‘Hello Mummy’ big knickers, I didn’t go quite that far. I browsed the Brazilians, toyed with the Tangas, flirted with the Frenchies and finally decided that as per the husband, boy shorts were best. Oh the comfort, oh the joy and oh the lack of fiddling and rearranging. They have the no VPL version which are wonderful under trousers and anything remotely clingy and are pretty and practical. I have them in several different shades….
I am slightly in mourning for my younger slimmer self and I know that if I got my act together I could lose a few pounds and tone up but I don’t seem to have the inclination time. I could live a life of salad and mineral water, of jogging and the gym, of endless hours spent willing the scales to lie or I could just get on with living, enjoying life and not fretting about what I’m wearing under my clothes and which bits are spilling over the edges. Interestingly, in a straw poll of girlfriends of a similar age, the comfy knicker notion was met with full agreement and confessions of boy shorts already acquired. There is also the thorny subject of the underwired bra and how long it stays on after you get home from work, but perhaps that’s a story for a different day.
The husband always says that I’m built for comfort rather than speed and it looks as though he was right all along somewhat irritatingly. But just in case you thought that the plot may have been entirely lost, I haven’t thrown all of the skimpies away, I’ve just moved them to a different drawer. Well you never know do you…
*Other knicker emporiums are available
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