I have noticed recently the decline of the thong. It emerged in my high school about three years ago. I cannot forget the first one I saw. A red, lacy number, not just peeking, more like gaping, out of the back of one of my star student’s jeans. I will call this girl Maxine to protect her “innocence.” Maxine studied fastidiously and consistently received As on her chemistry tests and quizzes. I could always count on her to be the top grade earner in my classes. Then, one day, I saw the thong. I was shocked. Maxine was so modest in every other way. She was shy, and she never bragged about her intelligence, success, and popularity. Unlike other girls, she never exposed her décolletage to the extent that to look at her chest was like looking down the grand canyon. I thought she would be so embarrassed if I told her, but I had to — it was part of the job. I found a moment when the rest of the class was engrossed in their assigned problems. I whispered next to her ear, “Maxine, your underwear is showing!” She looked at me, shrugged, and said, “Oh. Oh, well.” She turned around and went back to work, making no move to cover herself. I gave up the whispering, clearly more embarrassed than she, and said, “Pull up your pants, Maxine.” She did but still didn’t seem to care if anyone caught her in the act of adjusting her undergarments.

After the Maxine incident, I started to notice them everywhere. I couldn’t turn around without being faced with cotton, satin, patterned, plain, even one with a smiley face looking up at me as if to say, “That’s right, I’m on display.”

Many teenage girls today lack the modesty of girls of the near past. I have to blame the media on this one. I am generally loathe to pin it all on TV, movies, and celebrities, but really it has become quite acceptable to expose what would make many women blush.

Fortunately, the preppy fashion trend is finally trickling down to us here in the Midwest. I am seeing higher-wasted pants and more demure polo shirts. I love it. In fact, I haven’t seen a thong in at least a week. A new, disturbing trend, however, has appeared now in the other sex. It’s become so prevalent that our principal actually made an announcement stating an amendment to the dress code: boys may not wear girls pants! Yes teenage boys are now wearing girl’s skinny jeans. They don’t fit properly around the hips, so they end up halfway down their butts. Now the boys are exposing their underwear. At least they wear boxers.

Mary Ellen Freund