After Beyoncé flashed anti-chafing shorts on a night out, Rhiannon Evans celebrates her joyous (albeit accidental) revelation
In my life, I’ve had a lot to be thankful to Beyoncé for and, recently, my hero-worship reached new levels after she smashed convention and flashed her comfort shorts. You know: the thin, mid-thigh-length underwear designed to stop bare legs rubbing together. Oh, you haven’t heard of them?
Sure, since Bridget Jones quizzically surveyed her ‘big pants’ on screen, the idea of women wearing control underwear, or Spanx, has become normalised – we’ll all happily stand around at weddings and joke about smoothing our tums, squishing our bums and hoiking our boobs in a variety of torture implements. But, until last week, the skin-coloured Lycra comfort shorts I wore to stop my size-16 thighs painfully chafing every time I wore a skirt or dress (when tights were out of season) were my shameful secret. A final taboo I kept from friends who I’ve
shared far more embarrassing secrets with.
For many of you, rubbing thighs will be something you’ve never even thought about. You won’t have had to yank beige shorts from under your dress, shame-faced, when stripping at the beach, or hurriedly hack at some leggings when you realise you’ve left them at home. There’s even a hideous name for it: ‘chub rub’. If you get it, you’ll be familiar with its bright red, hot and angry nature. And it’s an affliction that even, it seems, Queen Bey suffers from. To the point where she had to artfully modify her shorts, chopping off one leg so she could wear
a dress with a thigh split (I’ll be stealing that style hack). Granted, her thighs are muscled from dance routines, whereas mine are wobbly from wine and crisps, but the fact that more than 27,900 people have liked a tweet drawing attention to her exposed undergarment and scores replied saying they ‘have never felt more connected’ tells you it’s a secret problem thousands of women are working around each day. Do you have a friend who takes tights on holiday? Or refuses to wear skirts in summer? Puts leggings under every dress even though that trend ended 12 years ago? They too could be suffering in silence. Because, even in a
world where you can buy sex toys on the high street, no one is helping them with their totally normal problem. Why is this commonplace dressing conundrum still such a secret and so rarely catered for?
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A quick internet search for ‘thigh slide’ or ‘comfort shorts’, will, I grant you, bring up well-meaning posts about ‘How to conquer summer with big thighs’. But while there are a number of specialist websites providing solutions – like shorts, balms or ‘bandlettes’ (lacy bands of material that sit around the thigh) – they’re expensive and niche. On the high street, which stocks a multitude of tummy control pants, there’s little help to be found for the thigh slide. In fact, M&S discontinued its lightweight shorts that provided me years of joy, and replaced them with ones that have ‘light control’. But I don’t want to be sucked in, shaped and uncomfortable, I just want to pop on my shorts and go – that’s where pretty much all brands are getting it wrong.
Before Beyoncé, other shining beacons of thigh-non-shame include Amy Schumer, who, ahead of last year’s Met Gala, posted a video of herself applying stick deodorant to her thighs to avoid ‘chafe’. Miss Eaves, meanwhile, released the body-positive song Thunder Thighs, which starts, ‘Chub rub, the day is just heating up. So what?’ and has had 1.2m views on YouTube. And earlier this month, Chromat sent models down the New York Fashion Week catwalk wearing anti-chafing bandlettes.
Today, I’m shedding my shame and calling on all thigh-gap-less women to do the same – and, importantly, for mainstream retailers to provide us with easily accessible, attractive and affordable products that allow us do it.
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