No, I’m not a pervert! My 8 year old daughter wants to know why they print patterns on girls underwear if no one sees it. A practical question! What would you say to this?
Because it’s cute? I’d bet large sums of money that they sell a lot better than plain white panties, or even plain colored panties, regardless of whether the girls choose them themselves or whether their mothers buy them. Even we guys will sometimes buy underwear with patterns now that there are some available.
Because a thing can be pretty, even if noone is looking at it!
If you really want to blow her mind, show her the beautiful work watchmakers do on the back of clocks…
Cute? :dubious: Hmm, there must be something very Freudian subliminally at work here! I bet in the garment business, this falls into the “don’t ask, don’t tell” bin!
Huh? I guess I better start looking myself! Do you mean antique clocks, or does it include the Wal-Mart line?
It’s an interesting question - and it’s great when kids ask stuff in that way.
Maybe you could nudge her towards appreciating the answer for herself, by asking how she would feel about owning/wearing underwear in some horrible colour (olive drab, perhaps).
Hmm…I’d say antique clocks (in a museum) and well-made clocks, perhaps not the Wal-Mart line. 
And of course, clockmakers make clocks. Watchmakers make watches. :smack:
It’s not just little girls, little boys love to have Spiderman, Lightening McQueen, Bob the Builder or Thomas undies.
Little girls are no different to most in society…they buy into advertising and stereotypes. Having a fairy on your knickers means you are a real girl, knowing you don’t have pink undies and you prefer trains to fairies means you are a real boy.
If you listen to what little children believe it is possible to hear the worst of our societies. They are sponges, they hear things and translate them into basics like what colour shoes boys should wear, girls should always wear pink and “only girls like Barbie”.
I know a three year old boy who LOVES dress ups (fairy costumes mostly) but he can only wear them if he thinks no one is watching. It is sad his creative play is so stifled.
Girls love fairy/Barbie/Dora knickers because they have always been given to them and they have a very clear idea of what being a girl means…it doesn’t mean Bob the Builder undies.
I grew up in a tighty-whitey atmosphere. I thought colored underwear was girly. If it was my turn to fold clothes when they came out of the dryer, I handled the girls’/women’s stuff like it was toxic waste.
Anyway. They probably have to color even the white stuff to make it pure white. So why not use other colors? Then you don’t have to do a separate loads for whites. Patterns? Variety I guess.
When she starts changing out for gym class, other girls will see what fabulous undies she has and be all jealous.
That’s like the tree falling in the wood with no living creature around…
/hijack
When I was a little girl, I remember being so incredible frustrated with the designs available for girls. I was really into fairies, and into all things fairytale, and I would have loved fairytale underwear, even if no-one but me and the fantasies I made up myself would see it.
But the choices available to me, were the last clothes a real fairy would wear. Would fairies wear bright pink polyester jammies with shrill prints of disney-fairies on them? Hell no! Why couldn’t I get undies made from rose petals or leaves or insect wings or dandelion fluff, like a real fairy?
In the end, I settled for nostalgic white cotton underwear, if I could get it. At least then I could pretend to be a girl from Ye Olden Times When fairytales happened. Which was not as good as fairy underwear, but hey, I knew when to settle. 
Your daughter is observant and curious, *Jinx. I suggest telling her something thoroughly untrue (underwear designs protect you from radioactive fallout!) and letting her run on her own. A smart kid like that will understand.
As the father of two (not-so-young-now) daughters, there’s a very simple answer to this.
Parents take young daughter to undies shop. Daughter sees panties, displayed in see through wrapping. Plain white panties - walks past. Panties with pretty patterns, flowers, fairies, latest cartoon characters: ‘Daddy - I want one, please, please, please, now. I’ll die if I don’t have it. I’ll scream if I can’t have it…’ You get the picture. That’s why they have pretty patterns.
The simplest answer is that someone does see it - your daughter herself! We dress to please ourselves as well as others.
Okay, then I must have been the only girl who thought the hearts and flowers stuff was garish and gaudy and hideous. It made me not want to show it to people, so I guess you could say it still served a good purpose.
Also, the days of the week 1) remind you what day it is, and 2) remind you to change your underwear!
Makes it fun to flash somebody and yell “Ka-CHOW!”
In our house, the princess or fairy or Hello Kitty motif on the front helps tremendously in assisting a small person in figuring out which side of the undies is the front side. All over patterns get worn backwards half the time (but the wearer doesn’t seem to mind).
And the more mature answer is that it’s nice to wear pretty things even if you’re the only one who gets to appreciate them. (this argument does not work on your mother when you’re 20 and home from college and she starts ribbing you about all the Victoria’s Secrets she’s seeing in the laundry)
And if there’s more than one girl in the house, the patterns can be used to sort out whose panties are whose.
I dont know… I think society has evolved all those things for a reason. But yes, little kids are a great mirror into how all of us are. The overwhelming “cool” emotion that kids feel at the sight of superman underwear is the same one that directs our buying choices throughout life, wedding us to brands and other meaningless things. It has a huge effect on the market that economists usually don’t think about, and it makes the market less fluid and effective. Still, one can’t ignore that those feelings exist in us for an evolutionary reason, and even in economics we have no idea what things would be like if the “cool” emotion or aspiration toward stereotypes didn’t exist.