It’s funny, when I started my website and built my blog page, it showed me how I could build categories. At first, I kind of chuckled to myself. Categories? Why do I need categories for random thoughts? Now that I am a few blogs in, I can now see some categories starting to evolve even without my intention to create them. This blog kind of straddles the Navy category and my current job.
Summers in Prudhoe Bay can have the few random nice days, but for the most part they are cool and wet. This precipitation leads to soft, wash boarded roads and treacherous, slow driving conditions.
The morning I wrote this post, I read the roads and pads report and sighed. It rained yesterday and is projected to rain again. Roads are going to be a sloppy, slow slog of wash-boarded gravel. The speed limit on almost all the roads according to the report has been dropped to 15 MPH, and I needed to drive across the field. As I got ready for work, I thought to myself, Today I need to wear the good sports bra.
Trust me, driving 20 to 30 miles over wash boarded roads is no fun, especially when certain body parts jiggle more than one would like. I realized that most of my co-workers probably don’t worry about this. It is neither a good or bad thing, it is just a fact. Most of the people who work up here are men. We women are a slim minority. Most of the women who work in Prudhoe Bay are housekeepers or admins. The few female technicians, operators and engineers are a tiny fraction of the overall workforce.
It made me think of a time in the Navy where I was asked a question about women’s underwear.
It was back in 1998. I had been picked up as a staff instructor and I was the only female staff member on crew at the time. On this day, I was standing watch as electrical operator, watching the board and taking logs. The hum of the HVAC unit and the conversation between myself and the reactor operator was suddenly broken by the curtain for maneuvering drawing back and the Engineering Watch Supervisor poking his head in and shouting, “Request permission to enter and speak to the Electrical Operator.”
The watch office granted permission without looking up from his logs. I however, looked up to see the entire watch team outside the door, peering in eagerly, staring at me.
My first thought was, “What fresh hell is this?”
He squeezed into the small room and even before making it to my bench he shouted, “Nipper (that was my maiden name), can women wear thongs in the Navy?”
Taken aback, my first response was something along the lines of “Hell if I know?” Then, “Why are you asking me?”
He was more than happy to oblige. One of our female students had put on a lot of weight since she joined the Navy. Sometimes it happens, especially in the Nuke program where you are parked on your backside for hours on end studying. She had become so much over weight that her uniforms no longer fit. Now if you have never been in the military, your uniform is supposed to look a certain way. Her supervisor, sensitive to her feelings told her she needed to purchase new uniforms because her old ones were no longer suitable, but he did not exactly tell her why.
Well, as I know some women do when they purchase a prom dress or a special occasion dress, this young sailor decided to buy her uniforms a size smaller to motivate herself to lose weight. While I can understand her logic, it backfired, literally. Unfortunately, while performing her duties, the seams of her pants across her backside did not survive the activity. They split down her rather ample backside. When she went to her supervisor and showed him her predicament he told her to go home and change. For some reason, though she had permission to go home, she decided to ask the Watch Supervisor what she should do.
Being a rather seasoned sailor, he advised her, “Just put some duct tape over it, you’ll be fine now, No one will notice.”
“I can’t, I’m wearing a thong,” was her reply, to which he responded by ordering her to go home and change, then running to where I was on watch to ask his question.
Just so you know this really blew their minds/freaked them out. Women can wear sexy underwear under their uniforms? Oh My God!!!!!! Personally, I kept it pretty comfy. Dungarees are uncomfortable enough. Granny panties all the way, but I digress.
Being the only female staff on crew, I was considered to be the font of knowledge on all things female. We looked it up. At least in the regulations at the time, it did not call out what type of underwear you could wear, just that you wear them. Believe it or not, it did specify color: white or skin tone under white uniforms, and any color under other uniforms.
So yes, we determined it was perfectly acceptable for women to wear thongs in the Navy.
I have thought about this often over the years. How much effort emphasis we women put into dressing and looking a certain way, even down to choosing just the right underwear under a garment, because heaven forbid people see a panty or bra line and know, gulp: we’re wearing underwear! OMG!
While sure, men worry about looking neat, professional, and presentable, they do not obsess over it the way we do. The interesting thing I have learned, working around men for so many years, most of them do not notice our efforts at all. Sure, my husband notices when I dress nice, but we dress and look a certain way because the fashion industry says it is important, other women say it is important. But most of the guys I work with? I really don’t think they care.
Thanks for reading, and I hope your underwear is comfy and soft today.