Panties!!!! Panties!!!! Panties!!!!

"Panties."

Charmed (2000)

Update. June 11, 2013...With the Guardian's bombshell scoop about the US government data collection from the world's cellphone and Internet users, privacy rights have arisen "up close and personal."  This 2011 blog ponders the implications of living in a digital age where a stranger in any public place can silence their cell phone and SNAP... your panties star in one of 65,300 "under-the-skirt panties" videos on Youtube.-dk

I  remember when panties were fun. They were back-to-school Day of the Week reminders in six pretty pastel candy heart colors, with  wickedly red, lacy Saturday panties.  And I remember turning flips on the monkey bars in the first grade, while wearing one of my new starched school dresses, then shortly afterwards, sitting through that embarrasingly serious talk about “not showing your panties.”

I remember a few years later, as narrator in the classroom play, sitting front and center onstage in the cafeteria auditorium, wearing that Sunday church dress, proudly and successfully reciting long memorized passages, only to be admonished that evening by Mama for not keeping my legs together.  And showing my panties. Again, the panties.  

By puberty, I finally understood that panties had power.  So when my six-year-old baby sister hosted her first slumber party,  I, the elder sister, knew how to keep those little imps entertained by merely uttering a word, repeatedly, "Panties.

"Panties.

"Panties."


Last I checked, there were “about 26,000” videos about panties on Youtube.  Lots of gals all over the world are willing to show you their panties, freely.   CLICK "These panties are too big. These panties are too tight. These panties are just right. Okay, they're too big." 

Some fellas sneak their silenced iPhones under unsuspecting ladies’ dresses to steal an image of some stranger's panties at the supermarket, coffee shop, or tractor pull. 


Just google "youtube voyeur panties." Okay, I'll help you out.  CLICK: if you have time to peek @ 15,800+ "UPSKIRT" videos?  

CLICK:   videos of lady shoppers made famous, okay, made public 

Every social networker is a potential citizen reporter, and anyone with a smartphone, a potential pornographer.  Ladies,  some creepy stranger with a silenced iPhone wants to see your undies. 

"You already have zero privacy. Get over it," remarked Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystems CEO,  at a 1999 computer convention.

The explosion of information by WIKILeaks and Youtube suggests there is no longer a reasonable expectation of privacy anywhere, anytime, for anyone.  

CLICK: The Internet & Your Shrinking Privacy Rights: "Anyone can post anything on the Internet without permission...and often with no consequences.  And it's increasingly difficult to establish what's legal and illegal. If that offensive material is out there, by the time you ever get to court...it may be hard to ever get rid of it."

Ayn Rand's frisque libertarian  panties would be in a twisted knot by the lack of privacy in modern society. She wrote: "Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men." 

"I can't believe I gave my panties to a geek."

 Molly Ringwald (1984)

You cannot someday complain that you freely showed your panties on a Youtube website which your ex-boyfriend later monetized into millions of hits. And if you are a starlet wanting a serious acting career, for heaven's sake, CLICK:  do not wear ambiguously see-thru panties on your Maxim Magazine cover shoot.  Ask yourself, "Would Meryl Streep do this?" 

"Publication is a self-invasion of privacy." 

Marshall McLuhan

Of course, the TSA needs to see your panties. And Jet Blue Airlines cares about them, too, according to plaintiff Malinda Knowles who was thrown off a flight when she would not show hers to the on-flight supervisor.   

CLICK: Panties in the news

 
Panties are so important, so potent, in fact, that some governments require "overpanties" to cover your underpanties. The Japanese are apparently obsessed with panties-- particularly cotton panties on teens and cartoon heroines-- suggested by gratuituous panty shots ("panchira") in their anime. Censorship law prohibits bare, realistic crotch shots, but mosaiced tight undie shots would be allowed. Turns out that Japanese audiences actually prefer loose panties to what might be under them. The panties themselves have become the objects of desire.   

CLICK: Suggestion to these winsome Japanese cutie pies wearing short bouncy skirts:  Consider also wearing bike shorts or overpanties.

Comic Bill Maher writes, "I thought that privacy was something we were granted in the Constitution. I have learned from this, in fact, the word 'privacy' does not appear in the Constitution." The implied right was broadly interpreted under the penumbra of the First Amendment in the controversial Roe vs Wade landmark decision, which conservatives want to overrule.  When that occurs, we will

" ...have as much privacy as a goldfish in a bowl. "

Princess Margaret 

Lisa Kudrow surmised we are trading privacy for celebrity, "You become a celebrity, not because of your work or what you do, but because you have no privacy. "  Reality shows seem to affirm this. Metaphorically speaking, she who best shows her panties on the monkey bars, wins.

Here is a closing giggle on the subject. Enjoy!

CLICK: BBC's "COUPLING" adorable lover-men pondering stockings, thongs and "spreading pants" aka granny knickers

"From the cradle to the coffin 
underwear comes first." 

 --Bertolt Brecht