A landmark hygiene study published this week in the Financial Times has confirmed what many of us long suspected but were too polite to say out loud: you should change your underwear every six months. Not every six hours. Not daily. Every six months. I feel so vindicated.
18 months of underwear supplies. (kaboompics/pexels)
The science is, for once, refreshingly clear. One pair of underwear per six-month rotation is the medically recommended baseline. January through June, you’ve got your pair. July through December, you switch. The first pair then enters what researchers presumably call “reserve status,” though the study does not specify whether it should be stored, framed, or eulogized. Some researchers suggest stretching it to nine months. One consultant said that 50 wears per pair was perfectly acceptable, which puts the functional lifespan of a single pair of underpants somewhere around the year 2050. That’s not just underwear, that’s an heirloom.
This reporter took the news with considerable relief. As someone who has faithfully maintained a single active pair since around 2019, it was gratifying to learn that medical science not only condones but also encourages this practice.
The study also noted that each pair of adult underwear contains an average of 0.1 grams of uh… butt stuff. This seems like an argument for changing them less, not more, since obviously you’d want to limit the number of pairs in active circulation if that’s the case. Because if you own fifteen pairs, that’s 1.5 grams distributed across your dresser like a fecal pension fund. And no one wants that. Except the Germans.
Emboldened by these findings, I visited Wal-Mart to purchase my next July-through-December 2026 model and was immediately confronted by a wall of proprietary fabrics I did not consent to learning about. Flexifit Modal Thongs. Boston Microfibre No VPL High Rise Shorts. ContourWear No VPL Brazilian Knickers. SmoothEase Invisible Comfort Shorts. I wandered the department for fifteen minutes, wondering when Men started wearing thongs. I assume during the pandemic, otherwise known as the Golden Age of Free-Balling.
Correction: This is really embarrassing, but it looks like I made the classic social media blunder of just reading the article headline and the first sentence I agreed with. My Boomer parents do this several times a day, but I am an award-winning journalist who should know better. [Editor’s note: he has won no awards, and none of this is in any way out of character.]
An easy mistake to make… (Guardian)
A follow-up reading of the original Financial Times full article took longer than expected, partly because several paragraphs required multiple passes and partly because I kept stopping to stare at the wall.
However, it confirmed several things simultaneously that need to be retracted and corrected:
First, that “change” means “discard and replace.”
Second, that doctors recommend replacing underwear every six to nine months, not wearing the same pair for six to nine months.
Third, that the 0.1 grams of whatsit stat, which I had interpreted as an argument for minimalism, was in fact a dire warning. Don’t ask how I know this.
Fourth, that the reason washing doesn’t remove everything is not, as I had assumed, because washing is overrated, but because some bacteria, viruses, and fungal pathogens survive temperatures below 60°C. I have never washed anything at 60°C. I have never checked what temperature anything was washed at. I did not know washing machines had temperatures. I don’t even own a washing machine.
On the plus side, I now own one new pair of underwear, which I purchased due to what I understand to have been a fundamental misreading of the public health guidance. And apparently, I need 13 more. The study’s authors have not been made aware of my interpretation of their work, and I would prefer to keep it that way.
