A Friday Chat About Underwear

And welcoming Megan to The Billfold.

NICOLE: Happy Friday! Happy your first week at The Billfold!

MEGAN: Happy Friday to you!! And thank you very much. It’s been an exhilarating ride thus far.

NICOLE: So I was thinking about your post about not regretting stuff you had bought at concerts, because I have regretted a few things I bought at concerts, not because the shows were bad, but because the stuff fell apart too quickly.

It’s Okay To Buy The Concert Tee

MEGAN: Ah yes, I guess I’ve been lucky in that sense? I did look at the Beyoncé hat when I was kicking my cat off the bed to take that photo and up close, it is certainly not worth $45 and is already starting to unravel a teensy bit. Disappointing to say the least ,but I still don’t feel ripped off, though perhaps I should. There’s something about buying stuff like that in the moment when you’ve convinced yourself that it’s okay that eliminates any bad feelings about it afterwards. Like, you explain it away to yourself that it’s fine, even though if you had bought a shirt somewhere else that fell apart within weeks, you’d be pissed.

NICOLE: Is it the cool-looking kind of unraveling, though? Like, you know that some people can cut off the bottom of their shirts and it looks great, and when I tried to do it at summer camp it just looked like I had mangled my shirt.

MEGAN: It has the potential to be cool, but I really should wash the hat. And I’m pretty sure once I wash the hat, it will no longer be a hat, just a blob of pink fabric that doesn’t fit my head right.

NICOLE: I am always so afraid to wash the clothes I love. I don’t wash new clothes before I wear them the first time, even though everyone says you’re supposed to because they’re covered in fabric dye and preservatives or whatever, but I’m like “why should I ruin the only time this garment is guaranteed to fit and look good?”

MEGAN: I have NEVER understood the impulse to take something that feels and looks clean and awesome and new and ruin it by washing it! I’m glad I’m not the only one.

NICOLE: Do you have coin laundry?

MEGAN: I do, but because I am lazy and it is so terribly conveninent in New York, I drop it off. They fold my underpants into tiny packages and wrap it in plastic. I’ll probably write a post about it. It feels worth it!

NICOLE: I would love to read a post about that, and also I would love to know how you got comfortable with other people folding your underwear. I guess you just do it, LOL, but maybe the real question is: does this compel you to buy more underwear more often? (I just threw out a bunch of socks with holes in them, for example, and bought new ones.)

MEGAN: Oh my god, this is mortifying to admit in a public arena, but I only buy new underwear as a stopgap when I need to do laundry but also need to wear underwear and don’t have any clean ones and don’t feel like wearing a bathing suit bottom. I’m disgusting!

NICOLE: I have definitely washed a single pair of underwear in the sink when I needed one before laundry day, but it never even occurred to me to wear a bikini bottom (PUN INTENDED). That’s not a terrible idea!

MEGAN: I am chortling aloud to myself in my bedroom at your pun! And, yeah dude, anything that covers the area underwear covers is fair game as an underwear substitute. Something else I think about all the time and never actually do anything about is throwing away bras and replacing them with fancy new ones. Bras are SO expensive.

NICOLE: I bought two bras and two bralettes at the beginning of the summer, and the bras are still holding up fine but the bralettes have turned into rags. Which doesn’t feel fair. There wasn’t much fabric involved to begin with, but… it’s not like I washed them that often. What if the real problem is that everything is cheaply made and we are fighting a continuous battle against bad manufacturing?

MEGAN: Most likely! I’m pretty sure the bra I’m wearing right now was purchased in a 2-pack from TJ Maxx for like $16, which seems insanely cheap. I guess the good bras come from Europe and cost a billion dollars, which feels okay when you consider the fact that you wear them every day. But plopping down a bunch of money for just one thing gives me the sweats.

NICOLE: And if you sweat too much you’ll have to wash your bra and thereby ruin it.

MEGAN: I have conducted massive amounts of research into the proper care of fancy brassieres and everything I read says “Buy this bra wash! Swish it gently in a clean sink! Sing it a song and then air dry! Do this every week!” Like….who has the time?!

NICOLE: What if you just threw it in the laundry once a month because it cost $15 and you know that the bra was doomed to fall apart when you bought it? What about THAT, bra people?

MEGAN: The lingerie industrial complex is not here for us.

NICOLE: No industrial complex is here for us.

MEGAN: Sad but also true! I’m so glad our first chat turned into a conversation about underpinnings. This is my favorite kind of conversation to have.

NICOLE: I am sure we will have equally interesting — and embarrassing — conversations in the weeks to come!

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