Panties: A Jail Story

When I was in county jail, they issued everything: socks, panties, bras, t-shirts, pants, sweatshirts. Everything orange, everything standard-issue. The undergarments were basic Fruit of the Loom — nothing fancy. Some jails will let you have your own undergarments or purchase some, but not ours.

I’m a small woman, and at that time I was tiny. I'd lost a lot of weight because, well, I was going through something. The smallest size panties they had were a size five. Twice a week, the officer would come around with a cart, collect our dirty clothes, and hand out “clean” ones. I put that in quotes because they weren’t yours — they were just whatever came back from laundry. If another woman wore size fives yesterday, I might be wearing her panties today. I had to just trust that the laundry got the job done. It was gross, but there was no alternative.

Our cell had eight to ten women. You got to know each other’s sizes. Some of the women were much larger than me — tall, big-framed, or heavyset. But when laundry came, a few of them would ask for panties in size five. The officer would laugh out loud: “There’s no way you wear the same size panties Stapleton does.” But they’d insist, swearing they were a five.

Here’s where it got weird. I started getting “fresh” pairs but they weren’t just stretched out — they’d been altered. Cut at the waistband. Someone (a few of them?) had figured out how to take nail clippers (available upon request from the officer) into the bathroom area, where there was a little privacy, and slice the elastic so the panties would fit.

Just like this.

So, yes — women were cutting up jail-issued underwear with nail clippers just to prove to themselves (or maybe to the world) that they were a size five.

The whole thing was equal parts disgusting and absurd. But that’s jail. People cling to their narratives, even if it means mutilating a pair of Fruit of the Looms in the toilet stall.

Thanks for reading