There are all sorts of cutesie things you can get on your underwear. From those ubiquitous bows to days of the week to ‘funky’ and ‘quirky’ phrases like ‘party chick!’ and ‘rock rebel’ on pants that you somehow still own 10 years after your mum bought them for you to celebrate your GCSE results or something.
But now there’s something pretty useful being printed on to underwear – and it’s a lot closer to home than you might guess. Because these knicker and bra combos have anatomical designs drawn on them and labelled up to help us learn what goes where.
The uterus, fallopian tubes, areola (the bit outside the nipple), ovaries and many more intricate bits of the female anatomy have been painted on to the beige knickers, and besides them being perhaps a bit large (the womb extendes right up into the bit just below your belly button), we’d totally wear a pair. Like, if we can still happily wear the pants we wore as teenagers, we can so wear some that depict us in all our womanlihood.
Elle Haswell, the 18-year-old who designed the underwear, uploaded it onto Tumblr with the caption: ‘Why are you so afraid of your own anatomy?’ tapping into the fact that women don’t know enough about their bodies.
Earlier this year, a report from Yale showed just that. ‘We wanted to know where we stand with women’s knowledge of reproductive health,’ Lubna Pal, professor of obstetrics at Yale University told its website. ‘There were quite a few things which were surprisingly concerning from the survey such as women’s lack of awareness that irregular periods may mean something for ability to get pregnant, or history of sexually transmitted infections may have implications for fertility, or how advancing age relates to ability to achieve pregnancy.’
According to the survey ‘between 40 and 60 percent of [respondents] had complete misconceptions about basic concepts relating to their own biology.’
As for British women? Well the fact that we can’t find a study looking into how little women know about their bodies kind of shows just how little we know about our bodies. Plus, anecdotal evidence tells us that that bit in Orange Is The New Black where they all discover that their peehole is a separate entity to their vagina really isn’t that far off from our own experience (or inexperience) of our own bits.
Unfortunately, as beautiful as Elle’s designs are, they’re not currently being printed, as she responded to one Tumblr user desperate to get her hands on a pair of womb-demarcating pants: ‘I’m sorry, they can’t be purchased the design was solely for my art piece.’
On the plus side, where designers lead, Etsy impressionists follow. Expect to see a rip off of these pants on a clued-up friend very soon.
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
Picture: Elle Haswell
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.