What a load of pants

Vogue has called it the biggest fashion dilema of the season. It has had shoppers in Marks & Spencers going round in circles. The dilema? To wear thongs or boy pants.

Two writers put their butts on the line in defence of the next-to-nothing knicker and the roomy pant. Now you decide.

THONGS says Esther Ranzen

At Christmas time a couple of years ago, I was browsing through the rails of underwear in Marks & Spencer.

Like an elderly aunt on gin, M&S gets tipsy and mischievous in the party season, and I find I can invest in lacy bits and pieces then which will keep me entertained all year.

I bought, queued, fought through the homeward traffic, and unwrapped three sets of black embroidered lace in the privacy of my bedroom.

Horror! Whoever designed the knickers had left the backsides off. Instead of a cosy envelope to tuck my bottom into, there was what appeared to be a black lace cheese-slice.

I was too exhausted to plunge back into the Christmas traffic jams and demand a refund, so I decided to try on these odd backless garments.

To my amazement, they were extremely comfortable. Furthermore, it was clear that they would be ideal under trousers, because they obliterated that crime against humanity, the Visible Panty Line. Why the VPL should have become such anathema, I don't understand.

My grandmother, the most respectable woman I've ever known, used to wear voluminous bloomers. They were beige satin, and had pockets in which she used to keep handkerchiefs.

They had elastic round her knees, and sometimes she used to store spare hankies there as well. Her Visible Bloomer Line was an integral part of her look, and when she sat comfortably opposite me, they did not detract at all from her respectability, and I didn't complain.

My own children are far less tolerant, however. Whenever I wore stretch jeans or long, lean trousers over conventional knickers, my daughters walked behind me shrieking.

Not because of the size of my rear, but because it was bisected horizontally by my VPL.

To me it always looked innocuous, but they claimed that in motion it was far more revealing and less flattering. Since I've taken to thongs, I've had no complaints from them.

Also, I can't help noticing as I dress and undress that the thong shape lengthens the leg and flattens the tummy.

They tell me that you can get little jewelled thongs with tiny diamonds embroidered on the back, designed to show above low- slung jeans, although at this time of year I think that's risking a nasty chill.

My mother used to warn me to make sure my underwear was decent in case I was knocked over by a bus. Decent extends to lace, I think, but diamonds might inflame the paramedics.

Puritans may say that age is a deciding factor, and that a mature woman should shroud herself discreetly, increasing the size of her underpinnings with each passing decade, as my grandmother did.

Am I too old then to wear such tiny strings of lace? I hope not.

The moment they offend my fiercest critics, my daughters, they'll be the first to tell me. For now, though, there really is a thong in my heart.

PANTS says Marcelle d'Argy Smith

Yes, obviously my knicker drawer - with some of its overpriced bits of lace and satin fantasies - contains a few thongs. But they're a necessity - not part of my sexual armoury.

A thong is what I wear under floaty, see-through printed chiffon Emporio Armani trousers. Why ruin The Master's clothes by showing my knickers? Thongs are, at their very best, occasionally useful - but that doesn't stop them being downright uncomfortable.

I'm paranoid enough about my shape to have two full-length mirrors inside my wardrobe doors. I know what my rear view looks like. (Every woman should know this.) So I also know that my Italian boy shorts sit low on my hips and are short enough to reveal the cutest, Kyliest bit of my bottom.

The American Sports Illustrated calendar sums up the look. Boy shorts make me feel like a wholesome, incredibly sexy, naughty tomboy in lace.

And although I have the sporting instincts of a fern, they also make me feel sensuously athletic. Suddenly I have boyish confidence.

It's like having a lacy sash swathed round my hips (think micro miniskirt and deduct five inches). They don't cut into my flesh.

They reveal the tanned parts of my lower back and bottom, and they're right for every occasion - from a night with the lover to a visit to the gynaecologist.

During a changing room moment last month, I was surrounded by some embarrassed thong wearers and their spreading bottoms. In my boy shorts I felt as breezily stylish, well-bred and understated as Kate Hepburn. There have been few complaints.

If you wear a thong all day it rides up the front and back of you, which I find reasonably disgusting.

So for me it is a necessary evil I can't wait to take off at the end of the day. Thongs simply do not always present a rear as it should be seen. And brevity is not always the soul of lingerie.

I agree that its arrival into mainstream underwear means that the dreaded VPL has been all but deleted from the British bottom. And for that we must be thankful. But beautiful? Truly sexy?

Obviously they are par for the course for Penny Lancaster, Kylie et al. When they're not sticking their derrieres in everyone's faces, they're selling or promoting underwear ranges.

But do thongs make the average woman's bottom look good? If they're so fantastically sexy and alluring, how come more women aren't wearing them on the beach?

Think of the construction of the thong. It shows your entire naked and unenhanced bottom which, just possibly, isn't perfect, round and peachy, and just maybe measures more than 36 inches.

I'm not saying 46-inch dimpled hips shouldn't wear thongs if they damn well please. I'm saying, think of your audience.

Just as breasts look more mysteriously inviting when enhanced with lace or silk, so do most bottoms look more alluring when semicovered. For now, at least, mine is under wraps.