HER Ep69 Underwear That Covers

Yep, you read that right! This week I’m talking about UNDERWEAR and why I need coverage for both of my booty cheeks! Listen in for ways to navigate the various categories of underwear and why comfortable underwear is a great thing. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Everybody, Welcome back to a new episode of Her with
Amina Brown, and I am your host, Amina Brown, and
the topic of this episode was not intended to be
correlated to the number of this episode, but the title
is correct. We are going to discuss why I think

(00:53):
it's important that I should have underwear that covers both
of my booty cheeks. And maybe you feel the same way,
but I wasn't doing that because so number is sixty nine.
And if that joke doesn't make any sense to you,
let's go on to the next thing. So I, first
of all, I have talked to a couple of girlfriends
recently about just my current thoughts on the importance of
my underwear. I'm not gonna be talking as much about

(01:16):
bras today. I think I will do a separate episode
regarding that. Today we're gonna focus on underwear. We're gonna
focus on draws. We're gonna focus on panties or whatever
you call your underwear or your draws. All three of
those terms will be interchangeable for me during this episode.
It's interesting because part of what brought up this idea
that I was like, I'm gonna take this into the

(01:37):
her living room. We're all gonna bring our you know,
hummus and are partially cut up green peppers and talk
about this. I was talking to a couple of girlfriends
recently about how my relationship to my underwear is changing,
which is probably about a bigger discussion of where my
body is changing, and that is changing my relationship to

(01:57):
how I want to feel in my clothing. Right, But
before we get into that, I want to talk about
what I was told growing up about underwear. And it's
interesting to think about this, right because I've talked on
this podcast before about how I grew up in church,
grew up in a very strict conservative environment. And when
I say conservative, I don't just mean politically, although there

(02:18):
may have been some ways it was that it was
a conservative environment politically, but I mean conservative in the
sense of, you know, wanting you to wear clothing where
you know pretty much it was gonna be you know,
your body was going to be covered, and particularly covered
around genitalia, breasts, you know, like obviously booty, all those things.

(02:41):
Want all of that to be covered up and not
be seen or be close to being seen. Right, And
in addition to that, we also want the clothing you
wear to not be so tight that those things are
more easily seen or air quotes imagined right, which you
know takes us down a road of purity culture. And

(03:04):
you may not be familiar with that if that wasn't
something that you grew up with. But in a lot
of Christian churches and Christian communities, there was this idea
that sexual purity was very much related to how you dressed,
what you wore, and the bulk of the pressure of
remaining air quotes pure was put on girls or women

(03:25):
right in order to make sure they were not air
quote temptations two men. So I was definitely growing up
in an environment like that. I sang in the choir
at church, and at least one or two Sundays of
the month, the choir war black and white, and in
my church's case, that meant that women wore black skirts,

(03:47):
because I don't remember us being able to wear black pants.
I remember it was black skirts, black pantyhose, black shoes,
and then you'd wear a white blouse, and there was
a lot of conversation, believe it or not, around what
kind of undergarment you should be wearing under your white blouse.
Or on Easter we would actually dress in all white

(04:09):
in the choir. So then it was a discussion among
the women in the choir of what undergarments were presentable
to wear underneath your white dress. My mom raised me
that if you're wearing white, that I should wear black undergarments.
Of course, this is before the current time that we're

(04:29):
living in, y'all, where now underwear and undergarments are being
made in nude colors that are actually nude for most
people that have like different shades of nude. But when
I was growing up, nude was beige, So that wasn't
going to help you if you were brown skin or darker,

(04:53):
whereas now you have a lot more options. Those weren't
there than you basically had white beige slash nude air
quotes or black. And so my mom would always say,
if you're wearing white, you should wear black undergarments. That way,
no one can see your bra or anything through you, know,
whatever you're wearing. I also want to bring up an

(05:14):
old school term that I haven't heard anyone say in
a long time, which is a slip. And if you
grew up in a church setting, and I want to
speak particular to you, if you grew up in a
black church setting. Then you grew up either wearing a
slip at some point in your life or the other
women that you were around, we're wearing slips, and some
of you are like, what is a slip? A slip

(05:36):
is a a satiny garment that could be a half slip.
I should have had my grandma want to talk about this.
A half slip was basically something you wore that was
like a satiny material that was the same length as
your skirts or your dress, but it created this extra
layer so that if someone were to look at you,

(05:58):
they couldn't see then aware that you were wearing underneath
your dress. And there were such things as full slips,
which had straps and you know, had like the shape
for your breast to go, and then they went down
into the skirt similar to the half slip, right, And
then if you wore just the top part, somehow that

(06:19):
was considered to be a camasol that was not considered
to be a half slip, even though technically it was.
So these were all garments that I became really familiar
with when I was growing up because in order to
be dressed for church and to try to air quotes
dress modestly and all of that, you would wear all
these different layers, you know, under everything, And did that

(06:43):
give me a certain kind of complex about my body?
I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure it gave all of
us this sort of feeling that as girls growing up,
and then as we became adults as women, this sort
of idea of how much of our buddies do we
have to hide or disguise in some way? And I

(07:05):
do remember it was interesting when I started singing in
the choir that a lot of the choir leadership would
tell us as women that we should be wearing white slips,
we should be wearing white undergarments, bras included, and that
was like never a usual that was not a usual
thing for my mom. So I remember my first Sunday

(07:26):
singing in the choir, I had on this white kind
of rayon blouse and then I had on I was young, y'all,
I was probably twelve or thirteen, my first time singing
in the choir. So I had on this rayon kind
of blouse, short sleeve, button up blouse, and then I
had on my little bra, which is probably still very
much like a little training bra basically, and then my

(07:49):
mom had bought me a black kind of uh silky
or satin me camusole to wear underneath it. And uh.
One of the missionaries at the church, because our church
had all all these different like leadership positions, right, So
there were deacons, there were missionaries, ministers and elders, right

(08:12):
and um, some of you may hear the term missionary
and think about people who you know go and they
travel places to share the Christian religion in those communities. Um.
And I think that may have been true over some
of the missionaries in our church, but I think they
were more locally doing some types of community work. That
was always my assumption. Anyways. So one of the missionaries, UM,

(08:34):
I didn't know her well at all. I knew her name,
but I don't know that we'd ever had like a
full fledged conversation. And she came up to me to
ask me about if I was wearing a bra under
my shirt. After the service had ended that day, she
asked me, and I said, yes, that I was wearing

(08:57):
a bra. And I explained to her what I said
to you all, that I was wearing a camasol. And
she told me, well, you should wear white so that
we know, like this is the wild things so that
we know you're wearing under garments. So that that was
a wild time of life, because on the one hand,
I'm being told as a girl to sort of try
to hide my body, to try to hide my breasts,

(09:20):
hide my hips, hide my booty, hide everything that could
that could cause me to be sexualized by a boy
or a man. Right. And then at the same time
I'm being told, well, it's not just that we, you know,

(09:41):
want you to hide those things. Well, now we want
you to wear a certain kind of slip or top
or whatever under there that shows us you're wearing your undergarments. Right.
So it was this very strange, like disparate message to
get and that sort of gave me kind of weird

(10:04):
thoughts about the purpose or the goal of underwear. And
I think that taught me growing up. Well, obviously my
undergarments are in some way performative for for other people,
but very specifically in that environment, they're performative for boys
or men. It's either that I need to be worried

(10:25):
that what I wear is air quotes tantalizing to them,
or I need to do my best to hide everything
so that they won't be tempted or I need to
wear something that shows I'm wearing something so that they
won't be tempted. Terrible. I do remember by the time
I got through high school and got into college, this

(10:50):
was around the era of It was kind of that
time of college where maybe I'm trying to think was
I a junior by them, but I don't think so.
I think it was maybe my first year or so,
coming back home from school. I really can't remember the
all the way full details of this, but what I
remember the most is that I was out with one

(11:13):
of my best friends, Adrian, and we had gone shopping.
I feel like we were later in college at this time.
I feel like we've gotten to the point in college
where you're starting to do interviews for internships or summer jobs,
things like this, And this is when the store The
Limited was very popular. I might be telling my age

(11:33):
to say that store, but shout out to you if
you remember this. The Limited was a very popular store,
and that was sort of where when you were in
your early twenties, that was where you got your first
sort of business attire and wide le pants were very
very popular, and so I was thinking I need to
get like some underwear to make here here we go again,

(11:56):
y'all with the I need to get some underwear to
not show that I'm wearing underwear. So I bought this
throng when I was out with Adrian, my first time
ever buying that, and came home and put the bag
in the loundry room, and then I left out to

(12:17):
go back and hang out with my friends. I remember
getting home and my mom was like I walked in
the house and she was like, what you need this for?
Who you're wearing this sport? And I was like, we
just went interviews panty line like it was such a
big deal then for your panty line not to show.

(12:38):
So that was the purpose of wearing a thong, was
so that you would still air quotes have on underwear.
But now it can look like you don't have on
underwear because you don't have the panty lines on your
booty cheeks. Right, So my mom and I had a
whole talk, and basically that thong got confiscated and I
can't tell you where it's at today. Not only did
my mom confiscate that, though, she brought me a pair

(13:01):
of some bloomers that she had and she handed me
those like here if you're worried about your pantyline, where
those Actually I'm not gonna lie though that I have
to give a small shout out to my mom because
I'm like, wow, is that basically the type of underwear
I wear now? Anyways? So all that to say, I
sort of like went away from the thought of cute

(13:23):
or sexy underwear at that point, and now I had
the bloomers, so I didn't really need the thong. I
think later a mentor like figure of mine bought me
a couple of thongs when she just helped me like
get an outfit for an event, if I remember right,
And so I had thongs because she bought them, but

(13:44):
it took me many years before I ever bought my own,
like song like underwear. And I do think we all
sort of go through some type of underwear evolution. A
part of that, obviously, it's because you know, when we're
growing up in our families, our family least have a
way they purchased things, they have, you know, whatever budget
it is. You know, so you just kind of are

(14:06):
accepting whatever you're given for some of you, those may
have been you know, hand me downs right in your family.
If you weren't the oldest kid, and for some of
you that may have been a particular store that you
remember going to because that's what your family could afford.
And then you get to a point where you become
an adult yourself, You're you're now responsible for buying your
own underwear. And so I think I was probably in

(14:28):
my like early to mid twenties when I was starting
to buy all this stuff for myself, you know, having
my own job and all that, and realizing like, okay,
well I like to go to Target. That's a pretty
easy place I can go and get Haynes or through
the Loom underwear there. But then they also had their
sort of Target brand underwear that we're like, you know,

(14:49):
for me, and the budget I was on, they were
very nice. So I was like, this is great. And
then by the time I got into my mid to
late twenties, I started to think more out what what
does you know, sort of a grown ass woman's underwear
drawer look like, you know, because up to that point

(15:10):
my underwear had been very functional. Really, I wasn't as
concerned about cuteness or anything. And I feel like I
was reading some articles about, you know, things that like
every woman should have in her wardrobe type articles, and
they were talking about how, you know, as a grown woman,
you should have matching bra and panties sets. I had

(15:34):
never bought bra and panties together. Never never done that.
I would just go to the store and get underwear

(15:55):
if I was, you know, running out or whatever. And
then I don't even know where I was buying my
bras for a while, and probably some of my bras
even into my twenties, my mom or my grandma was
buying for me for my birthday or Christmas or whatever,
you know. So I was like, okay, you're supposed to
buy a matching set together. Wow, okay, And that is

(16:16):
what sent me to Victoria's Secret. Victoria's Secret was sort
of my entry level point into underwear that I thought
would be cute. I think I was, first of all,
you know, looking to just have cute underwear and cute
underwear that matched with the bras that I was buying, right.
I do think by the time I got in my
late twenties, I was looking to have sexy underwear. I

(16:39):
was not looking to have sexy underwear or cute underwear
because anyone was seeing them, mind you, because no one
was seeing them. But as I was getting older and
getting more comfortable in my own skin, you know, I
wanted to have some underwear that I liked, and I
think as I got into my late twenties, I wanted

(16:59):
to have some underwear that made me feel sexy, you know,
And so that sent me to Victoria's Secret and the
whole concept of getting measured for your bras and underwears.
I will talk about bras fully in another episode, y'all,
but getting measured for bras was very fascinating time. And
then you're figuring out what your actual underwear sizes, and

(17:21):
then going into Victoria's Secret and being like, man, there
are a lot of different types of underwear, you know,
Like Victoria's Secret had songs and bikini's and they had
boy shorts and high leg high waste. I mean there
there were a lot of There were a lot more

(17:43):
choices there than I was used to, you know, experiencing
and target and I really loved that underwear evolution for
me of sort of starting to make the choices for
myself for what I like to have on for what
makes me feel good. I got married in my early
third these and like many folks, when they get married.
I had I had sort of two separate bridle showers,

(18:07):
if I remember right. I had one that was more
like the household stuff that people give you. UM. First
of all, the time period of getting married, UM for
straight people can be very fascinating as far as the traditions.
They're like somehow the groom just gets to like be
out and about somewhere, but you are the one expected

(18:28):
to be there for all those cast roll dishes, like
both of y'all are going to use them, like all
that stuff is put on the woman in that scenario,
and it's just a very wild tradition that we have there.
But I had a broader shower like that where you're
sort of getting all your house Whereas that's typically the
bridle shower that you invite your mother and your mother
in law, your grandmother, your aunts and people like that.

(18:49):
That's the one that you invite them to because you
don't want your friend to buy you like a vibrator,
and you're opening that in front of your mom and
your mother in law, right. And then I had a
separate shower that was friends only. That was all the lingerie,
all the sexy underwear for everything, and even now that

(19:09):
my husband and I have been married, you know, over
ten years now. You know, I think the best place
for me of whatever type of sexy underwear I want
to have, should still start with what makes me feel sexy,
what makes me feel good? You know. So let's talk
about where I am with draws today, and you too,

(19:31):
think about where you are with your draws today. For me,
draws fall in two main categories. There's period draws and
regular draws. Let's talk about period draws for a second.
Period draws typically need to fall, you know, in a
couple of descriptors. Number one, Period draws tend to be
darker color, right, because you want your period draws to

(19:55):
be able to handle it if there's a period mishap.
I don't play around where ring white or lavender or
yellow underwear during my period. I to play around with that.
You just go ahead and stay with underwear that's black,
that's navy. You know, you wouldn't just stay in that
sort of dark colors vicinity. Also, I know that some

(20:19):
people who have periods do this. I know that some
people who have periods they wear cheeky draws and thongs
and things on their periods I'm not one of those people. Okay,
when I am on my period, I need draws that
cover both of my booty cheeks. I need full coverage.
In my situations, I need full coverage. I don't mind

(20:42):
if I can pull those draws up over my belly.
That's I really need the comfort. When you're on your period,
you have enough to worry about. You don't need to
be worried about if your draws are like nipping at
your booty cheeks or nipping in some other places. You
don't want them to nip, you know. You just want
to be focused on not doing damage to anyone or

(21:04):
anything while you're on your period. So for me, it's
it's it's comfortable draws of darker hues. You know, that's
what you need. Then you have the larger category of
the period. Well, the panties you wear when you're not
on your period, the panties you wear for the rest
of the month. Okay, under that category can fall quite

(21:25):
a few things. You may have some thongs there, you
may have some kind of cute panties, you know, you
may have some sexy panties in there. You may have
panties that don't cause Wedgies. Yes, I said it, Wedgies.
And I want to give a shout out to black
women on Twitter for hipping me to the brand Soma

(21:45):
on this because they so far are the best pair
of underwear I've bought where you put them on and
they just stay on your booty cheeks versus going into
the crack. You don't want that. You don't want that.
It's a bad experience. I don't like to have to
keep tugging on my underwear during the day. You know,
I have enough to deal with. I don't need the

(22:05):
rest of that, all right, And I think it's good
to have all these different categories of underwear. But I'm
gonna tell you what I've been talking with my girlfriends
about that led to this episode. I was talking to
them about which is really this is this is a
conversation that's about underwear, which then is a conversation about bodies, right,
and is a conversation even about our relationship to our bodies,

(22:28):
to our clothing, to what size we think we should be,
to what we think we should be wearing right. And
in my life, I'm trying to really unlearned a lot
of those should and so I was telling some girlfriends recently,
you know, I have a size of underwear that is
my typical size. Lately, I have started buying a size

(22:51):
up or two sizes up from my underwear size. And
I'll tell you why. Number One, I have accepted, like many,
if you have this experience too, that I'm just gonna
have times where my weight might fluctuate. You know. Sometimes
that may be like a hormonal thing. It maybe medication
I'm taking. It may just be that my body is

(23:12):
out here, you know, living her best life. She survives in,
she thrive in, she doing whatever she can do for herself,
you know. But I have decided that I'm not going
to suffer underwear that pinches me in places that I
don't want to be pinched, you know. And so if
it brings me comfort to buy some underwear that's two
sizes above the size that I might normally buy, what

(23:34):
would stop me from doing that? It would be hard
for me to do that if I have in my
mind the size that I think I should wear or
the type of underwear that I think I should be in.
And when you start sort of getting rid of those
shots and really get down to being able to think
about what would make me feel good, what would make

(23:55):
me feel comfortable? You know, I think also when we're
thinking about our bodies and our relationship to clothing, whether
we're talking about our undergarments, which is clothing that a
lot of people don't see us in, or whether we're
talking about the stuff that we wear that people would
see us in, you know, we're out for a walk,
out in the store, or out with our friends or whatever.

(24:15):
You know, I think that it also becomes this conversation
to have of accepting the body that I'm in and
instead of feeling instead of wearing things that make me
feel like now, this pair of underwear is unaccommodating for me,
you know, like we all have different shape, different size,

(24:36):
you know, different things that make us feel good, right,
And I don't want to have to wear underwear that
is not going to accommodate for my full booty over here,
you know. I want underwear that's going to accommodate for
my belly, you know, for the corn bread that I've
eaten that I loved, for the biscuits I've had, you
know what I mean. And I think that there is

(24:57):
some importance to instead of wearing underwear that makes us
feel bad about our bodies or bad about ourselves, you know,
finding ways even for the undergarments that maybe a few
people see or maybe you only see, that it's important
for you to feel good in those underwear that you wear.

(25:19):
So if you know the normal air quotes, normal or
typical underwear brand or underwear sizing that you buy doesn't
accommodate for your hips or your belly, or your booty
or whatever, you know, find the underwear that does so
that you can be whatever you want to be in
your underwear. So you can be comfortable, so you can

(25:40):
be sexy, so you can be sporty. So that's been
a really good tip for me so far is whenever
I place and order. Sometimes I do this for clothing too.
But if I order some underwear to order, order a
size up, order two sizes up. If I want, maybe
for you, you need to order a size down, or
you need to order three or four sizes up. You
want to have a variye idea of sizes, so as

(26:01):
your weight may fluctuate, you have the clothing that welcomes
the body you're in. I think that is what's most important,
and yes, it is a priority for me that my
underwear covers both of my booty cheeks. It is an
important thing that I like and I am making that
a top of the list in my underwear requests. So

(26:24):
ask yourself this, what kind of underwear makes you feel sexy?
What kind of underwear makes you feel beautiful? What kind
of underwear makes you feel comfortable? What kind of underwear
can you find that makes room for your body right
now as your body is. I love to think of that.
And you know, I thought a lot about the word

(26:45):
comfortable lately. In my previous sessions with my counselor, she
has brought up the word comfort a lot. She has
asked me to ponder, you know, what is something that
would bring you comfort right now? What? What are uh
the spaces you go in that bring you comfort? Who
are the people that bring you comfort when you spend

(27:06):
time with them or talk to them? And I think
the word comfortable has gotten a bad rap, particularly in
the scope of underwear. Right when I was growing up,
we called comfortable underwear granny panties, right as if you know,
first of all, as if grannies don't wear sexy panties
too if they want. But also, you know, we were

(27:27):
just sort of making it seem like at some point
in your life you will sort of age out of
being concerned about whatever. And then too many of us
we were sort of being taught this implicit lesson that
to look for comfort was bad. You know that as women,
it's our job to look good and where this type

(27:48):
of shoes and this type of outfit and this type
of underwear, because that's what air quotes women are supposed
to do, which means women are just supposed to be
uncomfortable all the time, and that just isn't true. And
thankfully things have changed a lot since I was growing up.
There are more colors of underwear that actually represent people
who have my type of skin tone. There are more

(28:11):
types of underwear for all sorts of bodies, and we've
still got a long way to go. We've got a
long way to go so that any body that anyone
has can be not only well represented in what we
see in the media and fashion, but also that the
type of underwear that anybody wants and loves to have

(28:33):
can actually be available to them. However their body is shaped,
whatever their size, whatever their height, whatever their skin tone.
They've been a lot of improvements and We've got a
long way to go. In the meantime, think about you.
Get you some underwear that makes you feel good. Get
you some underwear if you like this like me, that
covers both of your booty cheeks. See y'all in the

(28:55):
living room next time. Yes. Her with Amina Brown is
produced by Matt Owen for Solvarfiti Productions as a part
of the Seneca Women Podcast Network and partnership with I

(29:18):
Heart Radio. Thanks for listening, and don't forget to subscribe, rate,
and review the podcast.