Accursed Thong

A few years ago I was working at one of the blander men's magazines when a colleague whispered a detail about one of the new female employees. She's wearing a thong, he told me breathlessly, in the same tone that men might have mentioned that a woman was a divorcee in the 50s, or that she was a hippie in the 60s, or that she was, I don't know, a whore, in the 80s. It was true, on closer inspection. She wore pencil skirts and had no Visible Panty Line and hailed from somewhere exotic like Europe.

This would be the mid-90s when thongs became all the rage and women suddenly decided, with absolutely no prodding at all from male underwear manufacturers, male publishers of women's magazines and leering street thugs, that it would be sexy and individual to wear underpants with a permanent wedgy. This must be one of the crueler jokes fostered on women by men since modeling agencies told us that Kate Moss was attractive.

A friend of mine works in advertising and was given an account by one of the larger manufactures of women's underpants, known as lingerie across suburban America in order to give these plain and frilly items a frisson of exoticism. He badly wanted to use the tagline "Cover Your Anus with this Sexy Swatch" but it didn't quite pan out.

This all started in Brazil, and that's as it should be. A whole different world where the point had nothing to do with VPL but with displaying as much flesh as possible?topless, thoroughly waxed and nothing but a wisp of material covering the mons de venus. Plus they were Brazilian girls! Which American girls are not and never will be. I've known Brazilian girls and you, the girlhood of America, are not Brazilian girls. Most women in the world in fact just cannot pull it off. Visible Panty Line is a God-given right to all men, but to see the lumpy misshapen, cellulitey, dingleberryesque asses of Middle America draped so is gruesome just to think about. Models aren't any better.

Last year I had the misfortune of covering the Victoria's Secret lingerie runway show in Cannes for a variety of now thoroughly dead "fashion" websites. There they were, the best, the brightest and the perkiest displayed much like I understand prostitutes display themselves in dingy midtown fuck-palaces. It was appalling. They strutted in their stilettos and babydoll nighties, pointed their breastless nipples at a nation of perverts, and showed their asses with nothing more than a little tampon string rammed up their ever-kissed cornholes. Now these are the girls who were more or less born into things?late teens and early 20s, so when they grew out of their sensible Hanes teenwear thongs were all the rage, and if anyone was going to look natural and good in g-strings it would be these supermodels. Aside from looking awkward and whorish, like little girls straining to be sexy (the essence of modeling), what I noticed was that almost all the women had various human blemishes. The stylists had all worked overtime and done marvelous jobs, but there they were, bruises, zits, minor boils and all, hanging on the lily-white asses of America's most fuckable. True, I was the only spectator with a pair of binoculars, but nonetheless, there they were.

What's happened to women in the past 40 years or so is a general travesty. No more garter belts and stockings, fewer skirts and heels, and in their stead we get to see that yes, just like men, women have assholes. It brings to mind not so much the ravishing beauty of a woman as her gastrointestinal fortitude, which unless you are thoroughly German is not terribly sexy.

Women I know tell me it's better for them because, like panty hose and a slew of other male-invented ways to subvert the feminine cause, the thong eliminates the visible panty line. Well yes, but it also promotes the thought that the woman has no panties on at all and is therefore ready right then and there to bend over and receive for the glory of God and country.

When I make the acquaintance of a young woman suitable for reproduction in my view (good hips is about it, tits are nice, personality and humor nice add-ons, covered in tattoos of course), the first thing I do is take her to London for the weekend and visit Agent Provocateur, the best and only underpants shop in the world. Yes they have thongs, because like all European shops they have tacky American customers, but what they really sell are bloomers, lowcut briefs and stockings, garter belts and ass-covering underpants. Then we go to Marks and Spencer's, which has a line of sensible, decent and womanly underpants, all made, coincidentally, by Agent Provocateur.

A couple of years ago I worked in a very silly office for an even sillier "fashion magazine" in downtown New York. It was the kind of place where everyone would smoke pot together and then wonder aloud why nothing ever got done on time. Among the highpoints of the office was an advertising executive who made the brilliant executive decision to start sleeping with the publisher of the outfit. Now this ad exec was an American girl, not that there's anything wrong with that. She wore those tight black trousers that children will wear and underneath, being a fashionable, clubgoing, boss-sleeping teen, a thong. The way she wore it was a spectacular display of ass over matter. The top of the contraption would be several inches above the waistline of her cheesy trousers and, as an executive, she would have to bend over a great deal to get pieces of paper, and then writhe on the floor as if she were in childbirth, ass in the air, as she pored over various documents and contracts. There was a point when it seemed she was wearing an extra bra, the top of that g-string heading ever farther toward her bulky shoulders.

I feel nauseous whenever I think of her, while she thinks she's the hottest thing since those gruesome Victoria's Secret clowns. There was a time when coverage was sexy, the turn of an ankle was exciting, when seduction had more to do with dialogue and intelligence than with baring the more disgusting parts of one's anatomy. Over the course of civilization there have been many points when we knew it was virtually over, but has there ever been a point where women were bending over, spreading their cheeks and announcing to the world here I am? Foul little creatures.