Underpants. You wear them nearly every day of your life, but probably don\u2019t spend a hell of a lot of time thinking about them and their quirks. <\/p>\n
For instance, in 2021 it came to our attention that not all of you knew what the holes at the front of boxer shorts were for (spoiler alert, it is in front of your penis for a reason). It has now come to our attention that people are also mystified by women\u2019s underwear, specifically with the little bow that sometimes adorns them. <\/p>\n
While the bow is clearly decorative, a theory flying around the Internet throughout the years has it that that wasn\u2019t always the case.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow? Because it\u2019s cute, it\u2019s feminine, it evokes innocence, and it makes it really easy to tell which side is the front when dressing hastily in the dark,\u201d one Redditor said in answer to a question on where the tradition began.<\/p>\n
As for the roots of the tradition? It comes from pre-elastic days, when your underthings were held in place by a bit of ribbon threaded through the eyelet lace at the tops. The little bow is where you tied that ribbon, and of course it\u2019s in the front because that\u2019s the easiest place to do something like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
While plausible \u2013 people still liked to wear undergarments before elastic was invented in 1820, and popularized in clothing in the 1900s \u2013 there\u2019s little in the way of evidence presented to back up the claim. <\/p>\n
Men certainly wore loose drawers or \u201cbraies\u201d that could be secured with a drawstring or a belt in the middle ages. However, it is not men\u2019s underwear that still retains a bow, nor do we strap a belt around our underpants to keep the tradition alive.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re not entirely sure what European women wore before the 15th Century. Most of our evidence comes from artwork, writing, and textiles that have been preserved well enough to survive until today, which is a lot to ask of an underpant. Women after that wore petticoats and nightie-like clothes under their clothes, known as a chemise, and sometimes corsets. In the 1800s, they also wore drawers according to historian Tim Lambert of Local Histories. They were plain at first but were more decorative towards the end of the century, adorned with lace and bands. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Underpants. You wear them nearly every day of your life, but probably don\u2019t spend a hell of a lot of time thinking about them and their quirks. For instance, in 2021 it came to our attention that not all of you knew what the holes at the front of boxer shorts were for (spoiler alert, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1071,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timeshow.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timeshow.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timeshow.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timeshow.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timeshow.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1070"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timeshow.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1072,"href":"https:\/\/timeshow.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1070\/revisions\/1072"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timeshow.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timeshow.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timeshow.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timeshow.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}