Underwear worn by women has changed from century to century and has grown to have a vast assortment of styles. Underwear was not worn in the early centuries by women and the idea of undergarments probably began with chastity belts. In depeartment stores today, you can find a wide assortment of underwear. The styles range from small bikini breifs to high cut more conservative styles and colors all depending on the age of the consumer. Certain styles of women underwear are also used for particular occasions such as lingerie and thongs. Not every female culture wears underwear or supports the ashions worn here in the united states.
Underwear was a private thing for women up until the last 20 years but now you can find men shopping for their wives and girlfreinds in many lingerie stores. In the early 1200s, Men came up with a device called a chastity belt for women. It was a heavy metal undergarment with a lock on it, worn by wives of men who traveled often for long periods of time. When the husband went away on business, he would put this on his wife, lock it, and keep the key in a safe hidden place to ensure that she would not sleep with any other man. Although the belt did protect the women from being unfaithful, it also kept them from going to the bathroom cleanly.
As one can imagine, this was not a healthy idea and certainly not one that the women liked. As time went by, women threw out their chastity belts and designed their own underwear which was just a peice of cloth assembled like a diaper. Soon, this developed underwear as a garment, and not just as a sloppily tied on cloth. In the early 1800s, underwear was more like a pair of pants. These were given the name pantaloons and they were not only for the use of underwear but as a fashion tatement. They were commonly frilly with much lace and were occasionally showed off under there formals.
Can Can dancers in france made it popular to lift your skirt up and show your frills in a festive manner of seduction. Today that would probably be the equivilant of a stripper in lingerie. But as the 1900s drew nearer, the underwear became smaller. Around the 1930s underwear was like a pair of shorts and were not as glamorous because women now were wearing shorter skirts and not full length formals. As the seventies came about, women were becoming more open about their exuality and underwear started to shrink again. The underwear was not only colorful but it was revealing the inner thigh and buttocks of the wearer.
This was obviously for the pleasure of the beholder and not the wearer . The older generations did not except this change well either and they stuck with the sully covered underwear. With smaller underwear, gradually came different styles which revealed the wearer in different areas. Bikini underwear revealed and enhanced the figure of the wearer mainly in the hips and it also let the buttocks and belly be shown slghtly. French cut underwear was made to let there wearer appear to be thinner with a thicker stomach band that is higher than the bikini style but with the other charactoristics of the bikini.
The thong was created for more style than comfort and protection. It is the smallest size of underwear and it had been joked about as the most uncomfortavle. The thong is even more revealing in the fron showing the hips and parts of the bikini line which makes the wearer need to stay properly groomed in the front. The most important charactoristic of the thong is the back which is ultimately ust a thin peice of material that slides between the buttocks and exposes the cheeks.
The thong is worn for show not only without of clothing on, but when wearing tight pants or a short skirt the line of the underwear is not shown in the back making the buttocks of the wearer more exposed and noticable. Different colors have also developed through the years when in the early days of underwear the choice was limited to white or off-white. Colors of underwear are not only for the eye of the beholder as one might think. Certain lighter colors of pants, shorts, and kirts show the outline of the underwear and sometimes if wearing the wrong color it can be see through these items.
Some colors were specifically designed for this like tan, peach and brown depending on the race of the consumer. These colors will blend in with the skin color and will not be as noticable to others. Red and black shdes in underwear have been designated passion colors. Many people will wear these when they know they are going to have a sexual rendevous with someone. plain white underwear is the most popular hough and they can be bought in bulk but many colored pairs need to be bought seperate.
With colors came prints from stripes, to polka dots, to words or phrases and the occasional sports logos. Some companies even put cartoon charactors on their product which have grown more popular over the last 4 or 5 years. cartoons were put on underwear origanally for children and it is hard nowto find a child with out a favorite cartoon on his or her underwear. The regular white cotton underwear is still the most popular on the m,arket but with all the new sexy trends and thongs, cotton is not the only abric used today.
You can find silk, satin, velvet, vynil and leather in most underwear specialty stores across the nation. Undrerwear of these fabrics are often sold per pair. Women made their own underwear up until the early 1900s but soon companies like Jockey, Fruit of the Loom and Hanes developed. Prices of underwear were very cheap, about 10 cents for a pack of three, for they were not as big an industry then. in the seventies, companies started coming out with specific womans lines of underwear and the companies branched out into Jockey For Women, and Hanes Her Way a long with a few ther smaller companies.
Since underwear styles started to grow, so did the prices and soon people were buying underwear seperately for 3-9 dollars per pair. Currently, fashionable underwear sells seperately from 7 to 20 dollars because of the brand and fabric used. The trusty white cottons and some prints on cotton can be purchased for 10 dollars a pack though. These are the underwear most women buy because they need it. they are not for special occasions but more like slippers and sweat pants for the wearer is not trying to impress.
