Alright, this may be a bit too much information for y’all, but here is is anyway.
I regularly go without underwear. I also regularly go out in my PJs, and combine the two. And I also do this in the cold of Canadian winters.
As long as I’m not going over to anyone’s house or out for dinner with people I know, I don’t care if I’m not wearing panties when I’m in the grocery store/driving my partner in to school/etc. It means it’s one pair of panties I don’t need to wash, and since I wash my pants often, they don’t develop a funky smell.
@mea05key – I love your thoughts put in to why women wear underwear. I can provide a lot of insight here!
We first need to separate boobs from bum, because underwear provides different purpose for each.
A bra is pretty much necessary for any women who has breasts larger than size A. Bras provide stability and take the weight of the boobs off of the chest and distribute it elsewhere. And you’d be amazed at how necessary this is – boobs sag a good deal and if they get as big as mine are (double D hey, that’s my name, dynamicduo is double d too! weird!), it’s outright painful trying to jog or run without support. Heck, even when there IS support, I find myself holding them tightly if I’m doing a quick sprint, just cause they’ll STILL bounce around. Also, bras absorb sweat, and yes, boobs can become a bit funky just like a scrotum (in fact it’s the exact same smell, so likely the exact same bacteria) if sweat accumulates between the boob and torso.
Underwear is another thing completely. It doesn’t provide any retention or jiggle-proofing. It is there pretty much for absorption. A healthy vagina produces small amounts of fluid throughout the day, and a small amount of that is bound to escape past the vagina lips. Without underwear, this fluid has nowhere to go except onto the pants. So panties catch this fluid, and at the end of the day you can wash the panties and not wash the pants and they will be clean (generally speaking).
There are also other types of underwear, such as a girdle, which is meant to squeeze your fat around and show off a more slender figure, etc.
And this is the functional aspect of underwear only. Women have long since extended past the functionality of underwear and into the decoration aspects of it. I’m sure someone else can come and elaborate on this aspect.
And one final point about pads. Most women I know don’t use them. Tampons are much nicer, less cumbersome, and don’t require wearing a pair of granny panties to hold it in place!