Gym knickers - please tell me why?!!

Ugh - I agree. We used to have to wear grey ones under our PE skirts and black ones with white stripes up the side for gym - positively indecent!

Ours were maroon with yellow stripes up the side. In the summer, we weren't allowed to wear anything over them for athletics. And they wonder why girls don't want to do sport at school.

You shoul have seen the awful things that I was made to wear during my basic training in the army. They had to be worn under a bottle green skirt that had to be ironed with starch in such a way that it looked like a box (the skirt had to be square). The knickers were made out of a wool type material that were elasticated at the legs & waist so it cut off your circulation and then really baggy around the front and back, so unflattering and totally inpractical when doing PT.

Ahhh gym knickers..... we had red or navy gym knickers when I was in school under our red gym skirts. They were thick material with a huge waistband too. Not flattering at all.

We used to have to wear navy blue ones, with our names embroidered across the front! They were truly horrid! The worst thing, I remember, was having to wear PE knickers when AF was here, back in the days when I was 12 and didn't know how to use a tampon so had to have a horrid towel underneath (sorry TMI). But how horrid for teenage girls to have to wear PE knickers - surely shorts would be just as practical and less embarassing!

This may come as a shock to some but I actually did not mind wearing a gym skirt and knickers! I moved schools at 14 and had always worn boy like unisex shorts until then for PE. Suddenly I could wear a short skirt at school and not get told off for it! I could not understand how strict they were at the new school on the length of our school skirts but then you were aloud to wear such a short one for PE. The PE skirt was navy with matching gym knickers, which were nylon and fitted me fairly well (some of these baggy ones sound a bit grim mind!). If you were serious about cross country like I was, you were encouraged to take the gym skirt off and run in just the gym knickers, which I did without feeling embarrassed. I do remember some of the girls not being that happy about taking their skirts off mind for running, so most kept them on.

If games was your last lesson or you stayed for hockey/netball practice, you could go home in your PE kit. I soon started doing this and swear I got more attention from the boys on the bus when I did so (I was not that interested in them at that age mind)

I do a lot of netball umpiring since leaving school and my pleated navy PE skirt and matching knickers still gets the odd outing when my more modern style white skirt is in the wash!

We provided netball skirts for my friends hen do which everyone had to wear, which coursed panic amongst some about what to wear underneath! Over half wore cycle shorts, a few had gym knickers on like me, but a few had to wear their day to day underwear as they had nothing else. The bride to be had to wear skimpy knickers of course!

From reading these posts I think I was lucky. When I was in school we could wear a skirt and wear shorts underneath, we could wear shorts or wear full length tracky bottoms. I always opted for the tracky bottoms as I didn't like my pasty white legs.

Mine were black under a black PE skirt. I don't know if any schools have gym knickers anymore, although my daughter had to do PE a few weeks ago in her normal knickers when she didn't have her PE kit!

Sameee hehe ?