Image: Sora Shimazaki
A healthy woman typically empties her bladder more than six times a day. The visit to the loo increases with more water, caffeine and juices. Loo is an exhausting business for women. They need to pull down and pull up their bottom wear more than six times a day. There is rolling and unrolling of your long top/dress every time you are done with tinkle business. Wearing bridal wear, a heavy skirt, skinny jeans, dungarees or onesies? Add extra four minutes to the routine.
How many times do men have to pull down their trousers when they have to pee? Zero. They need to deal with a zipper and not get into the elaborate art of undressing and dressing six times a day. Their clothing is functional, down to their underwear.
Women’s clothing may have grown by seams and hems with wrong numbering system and body inadequacy issues. But nothing has been done to cover us in attending the nature’s call department. Even the most basic panties fall alarmingly short of solving the body-fluid issues. A healthy woman will have varying levels of cervical mucus discharge throughout the month. Whisper has wings that’ll absorb the angel’s virgin blood, but the underwear it is attached to won’t. The panties were made just to cover the vulva with zero functionality. No wonder we deal with bleached panties since manufacturers think women get wet only when aroused. We have boy shorts, bikinis, hipster, seductive lacy underwear and thongs to cover our vulva. How many are solving the basic problem? On average, a woman spends up to $100 a year on panties alone. To think of it the underwear market is expected to reach $78.66bn by 2027.
Not all hope is lost - we have women entrepreneurs taking the lead in solving the eternal problem of women’s clothing. Knix, Athlos, and Modibodi are a few brands solving period and urinary incontinence problems. The absorbent underwear helps the wearer stay dry even on their heavy flow and sneezy days. Somewhere out there, a woman is working towards designing functional clothing that will not make us undress every time we have to pee.
In a parallel universe, women in rural hinterlands of India have solved the problem of peeing ingeniously. The sarees and sarong are proving to be the functional wear out there. The women have shunned underwear. They just hitch up their sarees, stand keeping their legs apart and conduct their business. No undressing, mind it. True liberation, ahoy!