As a child I was told I could never go out unless I was wearing clean knickers.  “In case you get run over” my grandmother would say.

It was not comforting to know that as I lay dying by the roadside, their grief and loss was so easily replaced by hygiene concerns. But such is a child’s mind that from then on, I was obsessed with underwear.

It’s summer holidays, and my little sister is visiting. Over gin and tonics we’re discussing this very topic.

In fact I have two sisters.  One wears sensible knickers. I don’t mean passion-killing, chin to knees, nylon granny pants, but white, cotton knickers with proper bottom coverage and appropriate levels of comfort.

The other wears undergarments of a different nature.  Frilly, tiny, lacy, thong-type affairs, all froth and butt-floss that make you wonder why you didn’t just go commando in the first place.

Me? Well I’m a pretty, matching set sort of person. If undies are not cute and co-ordinated then they must and shall not be worn.

But whatever your general type, we discovered that we all have pants in common.  Knickers specially purchased to do a particular job:

Anti VPL pants
Be they boy shorts or thongs, they appear in every wardrobe.  Their role is to ensure that under that pair of tight trousers, our butt cheeks are not cleft in twain. However peachy your posterior, you cannot style out four cheeks.

Period pants
I know you don’t want to talk about this but, you know, there’s always a risk.  No woman is prepared to put her best French lace in the line of fire. So to speak. 

Sex pants
Does what it says on the tin. Often immediately follow the above-mentioned category, causing general happiness for all.  

Lucky pants
You almost always get lucky whilst wearing these, and crucially, are happy for them to be the first revelation of your underwear collection. 

Thousand wash grey pants
It’s a mystery to me why any of us has these, but there they are, lurking at the back of the drawer. Old, reliable, washed to an unattractive shade of grey and lacking appropriate amounts of elastic.

Suck it in pants
The solution to your bulge woes, these pants hold it in, suck it up, and squeeze it to other places. They are impossible to get on or off without the contortion skills of an Olympic gymnast, and cause you to overheat the second you commence any form of movement. Should your partner nonetheless find you sexy in them, they’ll have to take a pair of scissors to the gusset.  There is no other way in.

Porno pants
You bought these in a fit of “perking things up in the bedroom”, having taken leave of your senses.  You imagined that you, a normal-shaped curvy woman, would somehow be turned into a plastic over-inflated sex doll. Why you wanted to achieve this look is anyone’s guess, but in any event you did not. Instead they slice into you like rusty cheese wire, and reveal your inner desperate crack-whore. It’s not a good look.

And now I’m wondering: is this the case for all women? Is it is a universal truth that we each have a version of such pants?  Or did I just over-share our collective knicker drawer?