Feral Truths & Tangled Threads: Drawer of Shame, a Memoir in Elastic

Or, The Day My Undies Gave Up on Life, and Other Clothes-based Betrayals

Feral Truths & Tangled Threads
Raw, personal essays weaving together intimate stories and cultural reflections that uncover the complexities of identity, power, and belonging.

There’s a special kind of betrayal that only undergarments can deliver. You spend all day trying to live your life — go to work, drink some water, participate in society — only for your underwear to suddenly descend under your butt like they’re trying to flee the scene.

I’ve lost a lot of weight in the last few months. About six dress sizes — not that anyone notices. Not on purpose, just enough that I’ve started to notice clothes sitting weird and pants doing that annoying “saggy but smug” thing. But nothing prepared me for this.

I got up late. The clean undies were downstairs, buried somewhere in the never-ending washing pile of despair. These were the last pair in the drawer. They weren’t a choice. They were a consequence.

Let me explain.

The underwear in question were a pair I had no emotional attachment to. They weren’t even mine, not really. They were gifted to me — and I use that word generously — by my mother. A pair too big for her. Her logic? “Hayley can have them.”

Hayley, apparently, being the family receptacle for misfired sizing and unloved garments. My house: the Wasteland of Maternal Castoffs.

They’d lived in the back of the drawer for years. Forgotten. Unworn. Exiled, like a cursed relic no one wanted to touch. Until recently, when I thought — foolishly — that they might finally fit. If still a little snug, maybe I’d shrunk into them.

Reader: I had not: Or more precisely, I missed the window and they were now very slightly too big and also slinky.

By 11am, they’d begun their descent. By 2pm, I was speed-walking to the bathroom with a sense of dread. And by the time I got there? They were fully under my butt. Not bunched. Not wedged. Fully. Under. My. Butt.

Thank god for my thighs. Truly. Thick thighs do save lives. They held the line — gripping that sagging fabric like two overworked security guards, tense but determined.

But the undies? They were out of there — making a break for it like someone’s drunk aunt at the wedding of your second cousin-twice removed, as she flings off her shoes and charges the dance floor the second “Yeah!” by Usher hits, yelling “THIS IS MY JAM!” like the chaos was personal.

I salute them.

And yet, that wasn’t even the only betrayal of the week.

A few days earlier, I wore a pair of pantyhose. Not just any pair — these were from a premium set I’d bought in a sealed five-pack. They’re individually wrapped, patterned, the kind you’d normally pay $22 each for at Farmers, but I got the whole pack for $25. A steal, right? You don’t get to choose the patterns — just your size — so it’s a little like hosiery roulette, but I’ve had good luck with them before.

They fit fine. Or so I thought.

Except for one tiny detail: the body-leg join was just tight enough to create a low-key tourniquet effect. Not enough to notice straight away. But by the time I’d been sitting at my desk for several hours, I was wondering why my legs hurt like I’d done something deeply unwise at the gym. Nope — just a stealth attack by semi-sheer hosiery. Death by slow compression.

But wait — it gets better.

Earlier that same week, another pair from the same pack decided to betray me in the opposite direction. I put them on. They felt fine. But slowly, silently, the legs began to gather. By midday, I looked down and realised they had bunched around my ankles like some Victorian ghost child.

Not a cute ruche. Not a “fashion slouch.”
No — full on elephant leg wrinkles. Tights too long, elasticity too lazy, me too tired to do anything but quietly accept that I was now the protagonist in a cursed fairytale where the hosiery ages but you do not.

It’s that classic pantyhose paradox: too tight in one place, too loose in another. Your thighs are being strangled while your calves are swimming in gossamer puddles. It’s like your legs are speaking two different dialects of defeat.

And just when you think you’ve seen it all — one final cherry on top:

You go to put on a fresh pair, one you haven’t even worn yet, and your thumb goes right through. No tugging. No sharp nails. Just one careful, everyday motion and suddenly you’ve blown a hole in the thigh like you’re some kind of hosiery Hulk.

You sit there, one leg on, one leg off, staring at the rip like:
I haven’t even done anything yet. I was simply existing. Breathing. Is that illegal now?

And the tights are just lying there, ruined, like they were never built to witness the day.

It’s not even a malfunction at that point. It’s a dare.
A dare to keep trying.
A dare to believe that any of these damn garments will ever love you back.

And then there was the bra.

Washed it inside a garment bag, in a front-loader on “delicate”, just like you’re meant to. It still managed to escape the bag mid-cycle — Houdini-style — and emerged with one cup fully ripped open. Not even at the seam. No. Half a centimetre above it, like it was making a point. A flourish. A dramatic exit in the third act of a bra-themed soap opera.

I stood there holding this mangled ex-bra like:
What did you go through in there? What did you see??

Here’s the thing: this bra isn’t new. Not in design, anyway. It’s been around for at least twenty years — a staple, a go-to. It used to retail for $125, and honestly? It earned it. It held you up. It lasted. It felt like someone actually considered the reality of boobs and movement and breathability. Now it sells for $65, and you’d think: bargain! Until you realise they’ve cut every corner for the price tag. Not for the customer. Not for durability. Just for optics — a cheaper number slapped on a product that’s been hollowed out from the inside.

They look the same. Same shape. Same label. Same soft promise of comfort. But I assure you — they are not created equal.

And that’s what really gets me. As one of the big-chested girlies, I’m already compromised on variety. I don’t get the fun colours, the delicate lace, the cheap impulse-buy multipacks. I don’t get choice — I get engineering. So when I finally find something that works, the one thing I need from this stupidly, ridiculously overpriced piece of plastic-based fabric is to not die on me within a month.

That’s it. The bar is low. Just survive. Just hold together. Just don’t betray me at the underwire like some polyester Judas.

But they do. Oh, they do.

I once had a woman come up to me at art school, poke me in the centre of the chest — actually poke me — and go, “What’s that?”
And the worst part? Nothing had snapped. Nothing had torn. It wasn’t a wardrobe malfunction. It was just a bra that looked like it was doing its job, but wasn’t. The middle of the underwire — that centre bit that’s supposed to sit flush against your skin like a quiet architectural anchor — instead sat poking out from my body like a badly placed lapel mic. Just hovering there, proud and uninvited.

It technically fit. Right band, right cup. But the design? A mess. It wore like a non-wired sports bra but still had the audacity to poke and prod with full metal framing. Not supportive. Not soft. Just… off.

And when you’re already limited — already dealing with the narrowed options of a big-chested body — that kind of betrayal feels personal.

Because this isn’t just about rogue undies and haunted hosiery. It’s about frustration. About the deep, gnawing irritation of never quite having clothes that fit. Especially when it comes to underwear — the one layer meant to support you, quietly, invisibly, without conflict.

Fast fashion makes it worse. Underwear especially — badly made, inconsistent sizing, fabric so thin it evaporates after three washes and is more ghost of underwear past. You buy a six-pack and two feel like dental floss, one feels like a car cover, and the rest just disappear into the fabric of space and time.

And when your body changes — which it will, because that’s what bodies do — the whole system falls apart. Sizes don’t scale consistently. Cuts don’t account for difference. Materials stretch, pill, unravel. Suddenly nothing fits quite right, and somehow that feels like your fault.

But it’s not.

This is best exemplified by pants — specifically, the way the rounder my waist gets, the longer the pants become. As if bodies grow upward and outward at the same time. As if every fat person is also inexplicably seven feet tall.

I’ve literally had pants be a foot too long. A foot. I’m 5’4” on a good day — not exactly built like a runway model. I size for my waist, and end up with fabric pooling over and past my shoes, dragging along the ground like I’m auditioning to play the ghost of Christmas sweatpants. It’s not shape-based sizing. It’s spreadsheet logic. Lazy grading applied to real, complex bodies by people who’ve clearly never had to wear the result.

So you compromise. You adjust. You buy the best version of a bad option. You make do. And when it fails — when the tights cut off your circulation or your bra pokes out like a lapel mic — you’re meant to take it as personal failure. Like maybe you should be smaller, gentler, simpler. More reasonable. More manufacturable.

But it’s not you. It’s the system.

The clothes aren’t made wrong — they’re made for someone else. Someone imaginary. Someone flatter. Someone deemed neutral.

And we all just laugh.
Because otherwise we’d cry.

About the Series:
Feral Truths & Tangled Threads invites you into a space where fiercely honest personal narratives meet layered cultural and political reflections. These essays explore how the wild edges of experience connect to broader stories of identity, history, and community.

Author Bio:
Hayley Walmsley is a conceptual artist, writer, and curator based in Ōtautahi Christchurch. Whakapapa to Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou, and Ngāti Pākehā, her work explores identity, memory, and decolonial narratives through layered storytelling and cultural critique. She is the founder of Provocation Station, an evolving platform for conceptual art and critical reflection. Recent projects include the exhibition Migratory Patterns, and she has essays forthcoming in SCOPE: Art & Design, SCOPE: Tirou and an article In Browntown vol. 1. Through her writing and curatorial practice, she invites audiences to engage with the complexities of place, belonging, and power.