You may have heard about the bra that stopped a bullet. It happened in Detroit, where a woman heard a break-in at her neighbor’s house, went to the window, and a bad guy fired at her. The bullet shattered the glass, but was deflected by the underwire in her Miracle bra.
It’s a Miracle, right?
The story got me thinking that my underwire isn’t working hard enough. It would never save my life. It won’t even stay in place. All it does is ride up, making a red line across my breasts, as if it’s playing Connect the Nips.
For this I paid $35.
I’ve come to the conclusion that underwear is not worth paying a lot of money for. Ladies, if you want to economize, your undies are the place to do it. Sorry, undies manufacturers. And especially Spanx makers. You know how I feel about you.
You’ll get yours.
Anyway, why spend on undies? First off, nobody sees it. And if you’re lucky enough for somebody to see it, chances are they’ve seen it before. In fact, if you’re married, they’ve seen it 3,437,464 times before. By now they’ve memorized your bra rotation, including the one special bra that’s your trump card.
Oh, admit it, girls. You have one. We all do.
You don’t have to be a fembot to have a sure-fire underwire.
Even nuns like me have a Good Bra. For church.
But the truth is, the trump card loses its effect over time. Men develop an immunity, especially if the ball game is on. I’ve never met the push-up that can face down a World Series.
Let’s get real.
I never knew a lot about men to begin with, and I remember even less, but as I recall, they don’t really care about bras. It’s skin they’re after. If you really want to please a man, I’d save on underwear and put the money into NFL Season Ticket on cable.
In fact, it makes me wonder whether men would spend what we do on undies. Take thongs, for example. I doubt you could talk a man into a thong, at any price. Men want cotton and comfort. They know their trump card is a steady job.
I went through that phase where people told me that thongs were “so comfortable.” Liars, every last one of them. Thongs are comfortable only if you’re a fan of shoelaces. I saw that movie Man on Wire, about a Frenchman who walked a tightrope between the towers of the World Trade Center. At one point, he sat on the tightrope and winced.
That’s as close as a man will get to a thong.
Plus, the less comfortable the thong, the more it costs. I saw thong prices go from twenty bucks to thirty, and I went back to my Hanes three-pack of cotton bikinis. Why pay more, for panties? In the end, I know they’re just going to end up as chew toys for the dog. My goldens stroll downstairs with them hanging between their teeth, usually when the UPS man is here.
Hi!
Plus cotton undies take no care at all. Throw them in the washer with your sweat socks and go. Even the Sturdy cycle, they can handle it. They’re Sturdy, by God!
Contrast that with the care and feeding of your thongs. Children need less attention. The woman at the store told me I had to wash my thongs by hand, in warm water and Woolite, then lay them flat to dry. I did that approximately one time. I washed my thongs and set them drying on towels arrayed on the kitchen table. Which was when the UPS man came in.
The curse of working at home is that the UPS man knows way too much about you. The upside is, you don’t care.
So I went back to the store and they told me I could put the thongs in the washing machine, but I would need a special mesh laundry bag to protect them from the mean old hot water. And thongs have to be washed on the Delicate cycle, which I always forgot to put on. In time, they turned into expensive slingshots, and I gave up.
I’m Sturdy, not Delicate.
And I expect as much from my undies, even if they don’t save my life.