Welcome to my washing line. I have chosen knickers to fly here. Red, White and Blue.
Why would I do that in a small pretty village in Lincolnshire?
Hanging out the washing is a universally accepted and recognised process for drying clothes. Which began around 1809 after the first patent for the dolly peg was made by a man named Jérémie Victor Opedebec. Before that, clothes were draped over bushes to dry.
The sight of garments dancing in the air like limbless bodies given life, in gardens, yards and slung across city streets is ubiquitous all over the world. It is the first renewable energy initiative. It is an age old business, it is a feminist issue, associated with nurture, linked to economy, fundamental to the environment and highly politically charged with links to modern slavery.
Where do our clothes come from and in this case our pants? How and where have they been manufactured, produced, costed and who by? How safe are the chemicals used to dye them next to our bodies? Do we think about where we buy our underwear, in the same way that we might consider the purchase of other garments?
How is our washing attached to a line, a rotary dryer, and with what? There is a code, a technique and set of instructions handed down through generations on how to catch the winds energy. Passed down through the female line. It’s ’women’s work’. With no pay.
There is a social code about what should and should not be hung for all to see. I once lived in Chelsea South London where the tenancy agreement had a policy that no washing should be hung out.
“Don’t wash your dirty linen in public”
Has generally come to mean that there is an etiquette that we should not share or discuss personal secrets, private matters or embarrassing disputes in public. In our new addiction to fame in the virtual world does that even apply anymore? What about in the real world?
I suppose it’s the contents of women’s knickers that is at stake here, “not something to air in public”?
I say it is. Menstruation, birth, menopause, continence become public, out there blowing in the wind. Did you know that the Employment Rights Act and the Employment Rights Bill 2025 says that if you have 250 or more employees you must publish a ‘Menopause Action Plan’?
The Red, White and Blue
So, here I am hanging out my pants in public! . . . and why are they red, white and blue?
My pants are the colours of the Union Jack as an alternative narrative to the flags appearing all over the country and the uprising of nationalistic politics. My flag flying disrupts those national notions and opens up a conversation and uncomfortable dialogue with a basket full of underwear washing, and a softener of humour.
Carefully curated recycled fabric from reclaimed clothing and wooden pegs.
Collagragh print.
