You have to write about this in your column, implored a friend.
Write about what, I asked? "They must bring back the tanga," she shouted. "I am tired of these G-strings, my friend."
Only a cruel mind could have invented this contraption called the G-string, she ranted.
My friend was recently shopping for new summer underwear and beachwear, and returned from the shopping spree in fighting spirits to take up this cause.
According to her, since the popularisation of the G-string - mainly American popular culture in the 1990s - there has been a conspiracy by women's department stores to generally stock only two types of underwear, G-strings and ugly granny panties, forcing all of us to buy G-strings.
When I tried to tell her that her conspiracy theory could be rendered baseless by the littering of boyshorts underwear in many shops. She did not hear me out.
She ranted that a revolution was needed to force these shops to stock comfortable and sexy, practical underwear for women.
"After all, only a sadistic man could come up with the idea of putting a string between the buttocks that uncomfortably scratches or digs into you all day, and call it sexy underwear," she said.
The politics of the G-string and who created it are inconclusive.
American fashion pundits have laid claim to it for one of their own, Rudi Gernreich, the designer whose flamboyant designs in the '60s were always ahead of the fashion curve, popularised the G-string, they say.
Brazilians, on the other hand, are quick to point out that since time immemorial their beaches were a spectacle to behold with sexy specimens parading around in thongs, later to be named G-strings.
Anyway, in the '90s there was a resurgence of the G-string in mainstream fashion that resulted in the undergarment being the premier panty of choice.
In Africa, they even went on to manufacture them in the sizes required to fit our fuller figured girths and anyone from size 32 to 40 has since been wearing G-strings.
So powerful was this symbol of sexual attraction that in history books it is said to have had a major influence in almost undermining the president of the greatest democracy of our time, the USA.
During the famous Monica Lewinsky scandal, when president Bill Clinton was accused of having engaged in sexually improper relations with his intern, details emerged of how a hapless Bill was lured into Monica's sexual web.
Apparently the intern used to flirt with the president by flashing her black thong every time she bent down.
During Clinton 's impeachment hearings, an underwear expert attested to the sensual power of the G-string. He analysed the sexual frustration the president must have been under with flashes of peeking thong. Finally he succumbed, doing the dirty with Lewinsky.
Although Clinton was famously quoted as having said, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman", the public had long made their judgment. Many have since questioned the practicality and indeed the comfort levels of what my friend calls a torture contraption. She quickly reminded me how happy she was to buy a Tanga. Unlike the G-string, the Tanga is made of two triangles cut low for the sexy factor but covering all the bits meant to be covered.
My friend has a point, after all. Before the G-string, the Tanga was the sexy, comfortable undergarment of choice. But someone decided to fix what was not broken. She's right. Bring back the Tanga maan !
