Village Prudes Have Nothing Better to Do Than Shame Women for Drying Their Underwear Too Close to Schools

(Via Facebook/Charlotte Wilkinson)

There are a lot of reasonable rules about what one can and cannot do in the proximity of a school. Depending on where you live, you might not be able to smoke near doors, sell certain types of goods, run a strip club, or do other things within a certain radius of a children’s school. Many of those restrictions are sensible, but one tiny village in the U.K. seems to want to add the drying of women’s underwear to that list, because a local grandmother has been getting salty messages for drying her clothes–including some scandalous underpants–too close to the school.

According to the Exeter Express and Echo, 65-year-old Rozamund Perrin lives in a quiet little English village. She lives opposite the local primary school, and she has a thing for pretty underwear. She also dries her laundry on a clothesline, though, and that has apparently sent some of her fellow villagers into a tailspin, because if there’s anything worth worrying about, it’s worrying that a lady is hanging her underwear too close to schoolchildren.

Perrin’s daughter, Charlotte Wilkinson, posted a photo to Facebook of a bizarre note her mother had just received in her mailbox, along with a pair of her own underwear, which had been stolen off the line.

“”It is totally inappropiate (sic) for this type of garment to be displayed opposite the village primary school,” wrote the person who had broken into Perrin’s backyard and stolen a pair of her underwear off the clothesline.

Drying one’s clothes on a clothesline is better for the clothes and much better for the environment than drying in a drier. If anything, Perrin is doing a public service by hanging her underwear on the line! The line is also in her small, fenced-in backyard, which means the panty-thief had to actually break into the backyard to steal the underwear, just to shove them back through Perrin’s letter slot.

This is not the first time the town has gotten its panties in a twist over the sight of Perrin’s panties, either. Charlotte Wilkinson says the parish council actually had her mother’s underwear as a line item on their meeting agenda about 10 years ago. Nothing seems to have come of that, though, because it’s not illegal to use a clothesline.

The entire village is not against the underwear, though. Several of the neighbors seem to think it’s comical. Several have been posting messages of support for her underwear on Facebook, and others have even been mailing her thongs.

“Dear Roz, A cheery thong in support of an “up your bum” gesture to the poison pen. Yours in neighbourness., Lucy,” wrote neighbor Lucy Martin, who mailed Wilkinson a pink, leopard-print thong for her line.

A couple friends have suggested tying all the underwear together into a bunting and wrapping the house with it. If supportive people keep sending her underpants, Perrin will soon have enough for it.