Ass Got Your Thong?

"Dear Manola 180,

Am I crazy or do thongs really suck?

Yours truly,

Miss Tomkat Frankencrack"

Dear Miss Tomkat Frankencrack,

No, you are not crazy. As a matter of fact, many women are ashamed to admit that they secretly hate thongs when the entire world seems to think that wearing fabric up your butt crack is comfortable, hygienic and becoming. So I thank you for your candid admission and hope that more women will be as courageous!

LOW ANGLE

We at Manola 180 like to look at all issues from all backsides. First, let's investigate the advantages of wearing thongs, if any.

Unless you are wearing a thong under tight hoochie mama clothes, a thong does have the advantage of preventing the appearance of unsightly panty lines.

In addition, when worn as seductive apparel in the boudoir, a thong may be visually appealing to the eye of the beholder, as the undergarment frames the cheeks and reveals the natural breadth of the buttocks. We at Manola 180 always encourage enjoyment of a healthy sex life and so if you get off on covering your nipples with Home Depot spackle (or whatever) in the privacy of your own boudoir, GO CRAZY!

A RASH ISN'T JUST A MIDDLE EAST NATION

However, the day to day disadvantages of thongs are many. To begin with, the constant abrasion of fabric against a tight, moist area of the body can produce a mild, itchy rash, which, while benign, is extremely annoying. It's ok for men to fondle their testicles in public while they spit huge gobs of mucous lodged in their tracheas -- nay, it's not only OK, but they can be proud and ejaculate a noisy load in public EW YUCK ... SPLAT! -- and yet, it is most unbecoming for a woman to scratch her ass in public. This is especially true if you are blessed with a fullsome rear and you live in Miami Beach, where the usual weather forecast is SWEATY.

Beware: if any woman from South Beach ever tells you she has never experienced such discomfort after wearing a thong for an extended period of time, you can be sure that she has powdered her ass with cocaine, that her nerve endings are comfortably numb and that she has never left the comfort of her South Beach hotel/condo suite for more than five minutes during the months March-November.

LOW RIDERS AND LOW SELF-ESTEEM

Low riders have also joined thongs in the ranks of fashion crimes against womanity. Now that low riders seem to be a staple fashion item, both the fashion and moral police have had to resign themselves to the public exposure of butt cracks worldwide. Did you know that every .36 seconds, some woman, somewhere around the world, is taking a seat and revealing her ass to complete strangers? The rate of crack exposure is alarming and increasing daily!

PANTIES AND INTEREST RATES: THE UNFOLDING CONNECTION

So alarming, in fact that -- The Fed, which is usually in the business of determining interest rates -- has recently released a study that shows, in no uncertain terms, how thongs have a detrimental effect on the economy. Do the math: even though women are mooning the world every .36 seconds, women are also spending an estimated additional 10 to 15 minutes picking the right matching thong for all the world to see! (This study does not even consider the amount of time spent running into barren alley ways in South Beach to scratch your ass.)

Cumulatively, this means that women are spending more time getting dressed, which translates into millions of consumer hours lost to dressing instead of shopping, boozing and whoring -- all activities that contribute to a healthy economy -- and which our heads of state and political leaders do all the time, see?

BUSH COVER-UP

Our field reporter, Christiane Iamsure, recently interviewed Condoleeza Couscous on the subject of thongs in the White House:

Christiane Iamsure: "Condoleeza, you may be part of the current administration and we may not all agree with your political views, but you are one classy, smart-ass and talented lady. Do you wear thongs under your Chanel suit?"

Condoleeza Couscous: "Christiane, what I wear under my Chanel suit is my own business. I may work for Bush, but he knows to stay out of mine."

And that's just it, Miss Tomkat Frankencrack, the whole point of underwear is that it's UNDER your clothes! In days of yore, you could wear whatever the fuck you wanted under your Gloria Vanderbilt jeans! Remember when men and women were less likely to share their privates in public, and we could gauge true intimacy and comfort in a relationship? Remember that archetypal commercial of someone's Stepford mother, who laughed at the skidmarks on her husband's Fruit of the Looms as she did the laundry?

Ah, but in an unfair example of gender discrimination, no one -- absolutely no one -- has ever talked about women and shit. I'm serious. I went to graduate school at the University of Miami and got a Masters of Ass degree, so I know everything, trust me. I researched this topic fervently for my thesis: Why Men in the Middle Ages Thought Women Were Shit and How This Has Affected Us to This Day. I scoured every nook and cranny of literary criticism and discovered nothing but a veritable lacunae of denial!

Do you know why? All those dead white authors wrote about women as the virgin and the whore, but NEVER as the bitch who wore poop-stained thongs. Yeah, women were the cause of death, war, famine, disease, pestilence, moral degeneration and all that nonsense, but women were never equated with shit. They were just treated like that.

CHRONIC CONSTIPATION OR NATURAL DISASTER?

As we have seen, historically, no medieval scribe ever cracked up about shit stains on the business end of a thong, which brings us to the yet another disadvantage of wearing thongs: a health crisis!

In a grand stroke of irony, women who wear thongs who are also famous and are constantly resorting to colonics and shit tea and other healthy lifestyle practices to look like a fucking ironboard with attached melons from the groin up, have to time their bowel movements according to their wardrobes.

We may not have passed high school calculus, but do the math: if women are sitting down every .36 seconds, and spending approximately 10-15 minutes deciding on a matching thong, when, exactly, are they taking a dump? Remember! These are women who can multi-snort but not multi-dump!

And once the decision has been made, you will NEVER choose a dump over fashion. NO! Unless you are carrying around a portable hose with the pressure of a fire hydrant to properly wash your ass, you will be walking around with soft, temporary dingleberries, no matter how much toilet paper and baby wipes you use to clean your precious tooshie.

DISCLAIMER: if you are a heterosexual man and completely horrified by the fact that your perfect, idolized masturbatory model might sometimes stink like a sewer rather than the ink from a freshly printed Playboy, read on!

MOVE OVER, LA BREA TAR TITS!

Many women who wear low riders and thongs -- some of whom may also powder their asses with cocaine -- thereby suffer from a condition known as Baby Bump. According to our medical expert, Doctor Suck MyGupta, Baby Bump is not a sign of pregnancy in celebrities with broomstick bodies, but rather the cause of the philosophical dilemma between having a bowel movement and thereby relieving intestinal bloating, but also having to walk around with shit stuck to your butt floss all day long, or -- conversely -- holding on to shit thereby increasing the level of noxious gas inside their bodies, causing a visible ballooning effect under the belly button.

"Manola, this is mainly a psycho-geographical disorder," explains the handsome Indian MD. "You know how the sun is always shining in Malibu? Well. Look closely. When you hear Possom Hilton answer a question about her new CD with some asinine sub-enthusiastic response, it's because she'd really like to fart so hard that she would blow the entire city of Los Angeles to smithereens. Governer Schwarzenegger blames it all on Mexicans and beans, but the truth is he should be more concerned about all these celebrities about to burst like a nuclear blast, rather than fret over immigrants or the San Andreas Fault that runs through California."

NO ROOM FOR HALF-ASS

So, Miss Tomkat Frankencrack, here is what I suggest, until further notice. Wear cotton bikini briefs in Miami's subtropical climate. But if you insist on wearing thongs, chew on this: if the whole point of underwear is to protect your clothing from your excretions -- let's call an excretion and excretion; it's no longer a case of modesty -- then why bother wearing a thong at all? If you're going to show your ass, do it proudly! Take a shit and still show your ass!

On the other ass, if you suspect that someone is pressuring you into thinking that wearing a thong is a good idea, please contact the Department of Homeland Security. We don't need more explosive liquids onboard national flights!