Request for information: Gym Knickers

My query is aimed mainly at female library members educated in the UK. I've occasionally referred to "gym knickers" in my stories, but I'm never quite sure whether I'm using the term correctly.

a) Does it mean underwear worn specially for sports. Eg would it be correct to refer to a girl wearing gym knickers beneath a short skirt while playing hockey or netball?

OR

b) Is it just another name for girls' shorts. Eg would it be correct to refer to a girl reporting for PE wearing gym knickers and a singlet?

Your help in this important matter will be much appreciated. Otherwise I may lie awake at night thinking about it ....

While I am not female, I was educated in a co-educational school in the UK and took an intelligent interest in the subject you raised as part of my education.

The garment in both my secondary schools was navy-blue and tight, generally just covering the underbuttocks and clutching them. Navy-blue was the common colour though not the only one: various memoirs have referred to bottle green, and I remember girls from another school arriving for some athletics competition and competing in dark red knickers. Later, the knickers while mostly still navy blue became stretchier and shorter (different material, I assume, to the rather rough cloth) and tended to expose slivers of underbuttock on the portlier bottoms, especially if the girl bent.

Certainly at my first school the P.E. knickers (that was the term rather than gym, as gym implied indoor activity and P.E. could be indoors or outdoors) were identical to those required by school uniform regulations for normal dress, though whether girls changed into a spare pair for P.E. and Games, I don't know. If they didn't, they could have been sweaty or damp or muddy (from outdoor events) for some time afterwards, so my guess is they changed. From memory, I think in my second secondary school the uniform regs must still have required navy-blue knickers up to the point a strict uniform was replaced by broad guidelines, though certainly some girls wore something else. P.E. and Games, though, were still done in navy-blue knickers.

These were often worn under a very short, rather rigid navy-blue skirt called the gymslip, a famed fantasy item, though I think most boys regarded them as a bit of a killjoy. More often, though, no gymslip was worn and girls carried out their tasks or play in knickers and loose white vest (the term over here in my time was vest rather than singlet), or in colder weather, with a navy blue thin woollen jersey or suchlike over the top but not covering the knickers.

Girls did not, of course, actually report for P.E. or Games in this garb only, as they'd come from other lessons fully clothed and change in the changing-rooms, an area of much juvenile fantasy.

Adult versions of the gymslip were also sometimes worn by female P.E. and Games teachers. I have no information about what they wore under them.

Thanks for sharing your extensive research, bh. It would seem to suggest that both of my usages could be correct, and the same garment might be worn with or without something over it. Interestingly enough, I've just discovered that the the very brief shorts which top level female athletes prefer to wear these days are still referred to as "knickers" or "running knickers". Ah, such a beautiful word!

May I add that BH's memory accords with mine. Certainly PE knickers were worn, sometimes with a games ver short) skirt. You can still see netball players wearing them these days. I guess they were supposed to be more covering than ordinary knickers.

The problem girls faced was that if they forgot to bring their PE knickers without a suitable get-out-of-jail-free note from their parents thay'd have to do PE in their ordinary knickers with said very short games skirt.

I recall a couple of girls sitting on the edge of the stage in the hall one day when we were supposed to be playing badminton and not joining in as they knew that any sort athletic movement would spell embarrassment. If we'd not been 5th years and unsupervised they wouldn't have got away with it.

As a PS, my wife still has her PE knickers, navy blue and a horrid nylon material. She doesn't wear them though.

Gym knickers are just that, knickers worn to preserve modesty while doing pe, games, gym etc The school I went to (a boarding school) had a strict uniform and that included blue gym knickers, several pairs, for when we did games on a Wednesday afternoon and a Sunday morning. Other than these we were allowed to wear whatever panties we wanted No cp though, this was the 80s

So did you wear them under a short skirt, or just on their own, or both depending on the activity?

We had short blue pleated skirts which we wore over them Alan

Thank you. Your evidence has been very helpful to this enquiry,

LOL ur very welcome

My recollections match with parts of all the memories above.

Navy blue gym knickers were always worn as a standard part of the school uniform (and I attended that same school from ages five until eighteen!) These garments were made of a thick, not very stretchy and certainly not always colour-fast fabric. They were baggy with elastic waists and often leg elastic as well - where else would we secrete our handkerchiefs, after all?

Until the end of Primary school, we wore gym tunics (a heavy gaberdine fabric, most unbecomingly adorned with box pleats all round and 'clinched' by a woven 'girdle') in all classes. But, in the gymnasium and in the playground for netball, the attire was a monogrammed white cotton blouse with the navy knickers (and bare feet if we were indoors.) For hockey practice we retained our tunics worn with woollen knee socks - but those playing for any of the teams wore black lisle stockings and suspenders along with the ubiquitous knickers.