Rainbow Underwear

I was folding my laundry yesterday when I realized I only had two pieces that were white. Everything else was colored. Mostly brightly colored. Now I'm not anywhere near the age of the underwear models with their perky breasts and flat bellies. Matter of fact, I'm...older. Well, all right, I confess I'm likely old enough to be their grandma.

Anyway, I started thinking about how underwear styles have changed during my lifetime. When I was a very young girl, white cotton knit panties were pretty much the style. As I added a few years on, I also wore a white knit camisole. (I always think that camisole is such a feminine word. Too bad it isn't used much anymore.)

Around thirteen, I graduated to a white cotton bra. Some of you are old enough to remember the kind that had concentric rings of stitching and came to a sharp point. No woman on earth was shaped like that, but there you go. It was the style. So millions of women wore bras shaped like breastplates.

When I married at eighteen, the first thing I did was buy colored underwear. No, nothing daring. No black. No red. As I recall, what was available in those colors back then was very expensive. I bought dainty flowered items in this awful cheap silky fabric that dried out in the dryer and frayed. After a few washings, it felt like shredded plastic.

Over the next few years, I went through several phases. Pale colors. Silky. Stretchy. (Yeah, I was pregnant for several centuries so there was a lot of stretchy in there. And for some reason, they didn't make maternity underwear in any color except white. Seems like they would have made color just to cheer the mom-to-be because for darn sure it's tough to feel sexy while carrying around a watermelon in your belly.) And...back to cotton.

The difference now is the wide variety of styles, colors, prints, and thank goodness!!! sizes. I have sports bras in red, gray, blue, black, pink, turquoise and beige. Panties range from black to purple to green to gray. What I find amusing is I never pay attention to what color undies I have on. If both pieces match, it's by sheer accident. If they come close to matching my outer wear, then that's obviously intervention from God.

Women aren't the only ones that enjoy colored underwear. Men have an astonishing variety of colors and fabrics and styles to choose from. Children have a wonderful selection that includes styles with Barbie and Batman and Spongebob.

Remember the old days when you added bleach to the underwear washload? Heh. No more. Do people still have any white laundry? I remember my mother also adding something called bluing to the laundry. I wonder if anyone still uses that? Come to think of it, what the heck was it supposed to do?

At our house, we toss all the laundry in together. Dark colors together and all the light colors in another load. And once in a while we have enough for a white load. But not often.

Now we have all the colors of the rainbow.

anny