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# What’s in those drawers?
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/whats-in-those-drawers/
- Published: 2007-11-23T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T04:04:32.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import

I wonder if the word “panchira” will ever catch on in English. We took tchotchke from Yiddish, and derriere from French, so why not take panchira from Japanese?

Panchira: Panty-glimpse. The Japanese have one word for what it takes English-speakers to say in 10 — “I see London, I see France, I see your underpants.”

It used to be that Japanese perverts were content to stick their camera-phones up a schoolgirl’s skirt for a panchira, but not anymore. Tech-savvy degenerates have figured out a way to modify the night-vision mode on video cameras to see through fabric.

So, how does a Japanese schoolgirl dress for anime fetishists, but avoid having footage of her seishokuki end up on the Internet? She buys $17 panties.

Cramer Japan is a textile company that has invented infrared-ray-blocking undies called ShotGuard Inner Shorts. The futuristic fabric is a weave of nylon and polyurethane. Inner Shorts come only in beige. How practical. How retro.

Splashing suggestive words or phrases across one’s derriere is a relatively new idea. In the 18th century, the spinning jenny and the cotton gin made it possible to mass-produce underwear. (Wouldn’t history have been so much more interesting had they taught it as “A Panty Glimpse Through the Ages?”) By the early 1900s, so many companies were making underwear that they needed to start advertising. Underwear didn’t need to be fun-to-wear, it only needed to be durable and prevent chaffing. Eventually, strength and comfort just weren’t enough.

Only since the 1950s have manufacturers printed panties with patterns. In the ‘80s, I had pairs printed with subservient little flowers, while my younger brother got “crime fighters” covered with the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and “Batman.” Now, it’s possible to personalize your knickers (and I don’t mean writing your name on the tag). Stuck on what Christmas gift to get the person who has everything? Get online and order them a Pantogram.

But what’s up with t’ween girls walking down the Third Street Promenade, swinging hot pink Victoria’s Secret bags over their arms? What happened to floral briefs? Who is getting a panchira at these girls’ undies?

A couple of years ago, my mother got me a little metal sculpture of a woman holding a shopping bag. The shopping bag read, “Put on your big girl panties and deal with it.” What on the earth, I thought, am I supposed to do with this? I put the funky tchotchke in my apartment’s dining nook (that never gets used for dining), on top of the heater (that, in three years, has never been turned on). Every now and again, I catch the metal woman looking at me, judging me. Shut up, I want to tell her. I’m wearing my big girl panties.

Two years ago, on vacation in Paris, I ran out of underwear. (I have a tendency of packing less clothing than I need for a trip because it gives me an excuse to shop once I reach my destination.) A lingerie store was selling bins of Euro thongs. Among others, I bought a hot pink one embroidered with a gold scorpion, and a royal blue one with an owl. The owl had googly-eyes, and the first time I pulled my jeans on over them, the owl’s right eye popped off. After a couple washings, his left eye popped off, too.

The blind owl is in my underwear drawer, unable to catch a panchira of my big girl panties: Comfortable, cotton, and boringly beige.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/55/9f/559f9abc-8372-4a2e-8c2d-27386da4e363/content/images/2026/10/112307-14_01.jpg)

DIRTY LAUNDRY: Picking the right underpants can be one of the most important choices a woman can make. (Photo: Photo courtesy)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 23, 2007.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/112307.pdf?ref=smdp.com)