Rules For Wearing Sexy Underwear

I spend an excessive amount of time picking out my underwear each morning.

Often, I am the only person who actually sees my skivvies — besides any of my roommates who have the misfortune of accidentally walking into the room while I’m changing (bless their scarred souls). However, knowing that I have a black-and-red lace secret hidden under my clothing — especially if I’m wearing a particularly dumpy ensemble — can make me feel sexier and therefore more confident.

(Besides, what if  — knock on wood — a car ever runs over me? Blood and guts aside, I want to look good when EMS workers have to peel off my clothing to check for injuries)

As someone who has suffered from the same body image problems that seem to torment most 20-year-old girls with alarming viciousness, I started to feel better when I could appreciate how I looked, stripped to only the bare essentials, more than I cared about how anyone else perceived my appearance.

Consequently, I believe that it’s important for any girl to own at least one pair of sexy underwear, not for anyone but herself.

We should go out and treat ourselves to the skimpiest set of underwear we can find — more expensive than we can afford and certainly more expensive than anyone should pay for a thin sheet of fabric meant to sheath his or her rear. We should buy a pair that would make our grandmother blush if she ever found it, accidentally, in the laundry.

Most importantly of all, we should buy a pair that makes us feel as sexy as we deserve when we put it on. (Side-note: here, I’m going to caution against purchasing thongs. I know they have a reputation as being provocative and sexy, but I think that’s just a cultural sham. All I’m saying is that I don’t know anyone who actually enjoys putting on underwear that feels as though they’ve just strapped butt floss to their lower half)

And we should stand in front of the mirror and learn to love how we look in this pair of underwear. We should embrace every curve of a shape that makes us unique and lovely.

Probably, most of us already know that self-acceptance is a struggle that seems to have no end — that, no matter how intensely or frequently we tell ourselves to calm down, some shrill, neurotic voice in our own heads continues to tear us down.

But, we should realize that looking sexy begins with feeling sexy, and that we should feel sexy for ourselves rather than trying to look sexy for anyone else — that no romantic interest deserves to see us in that pair of barely-there, lavender-lace bikinis more than we deserve to see and love ourselves in them.

So, the next time before we schlep to work or school, we should put on our hottest pair of skivvies under our argyle sweaters and demure pencil skirts and remember to feel confident.

Because it might be business on top, but it’s a party underneath.