When I was in seventh grade, I got my first thong. I remember the adrenaline I felt when I walked towards the cashier with the bright blue butt-less apparatus in hand. I remember how rebellious and mature I felt as the women handed me my purchase and robotically spoke, “Have a good day.” I smiled suspiciously, grabbed the bag, and hoarded it as deep down in my purse as it could go. I had planned it that way. I knew when my mom picked me back up from the mall she would ask the generic “So what’d you girls get” question as her eyes would scan the bags on the car floor. I knew the evidence needed to be hid and out of sight.
The thong cost me about $2.99, but to me, you could never put a price on that kind of freedom.
Unfortunately, that same thong would later betray in me in way I never thought possible. A few months later, I was in my middle school library for some sort of presentation. Tight jeans, bright belts, and hip-length Abercrombie t-shirts were in that season. As my classmates and I hunched over to work on our assignment, I felt a light but authoritative tap on my shoulder. I turned around to the face of my teacher. She lowered her head and facetiously whispered in my ear, “Sweetie, your thong is showing.” In horror, I shot my hand down to my lower back to realize how wrong she was. Not only was my original bright blue thong hanging out, but it had failed to do its job of covering up my butt crack as well. It was a two-fer- a horrific two-fer.
Sophomore Brittany Neilson identifies with a similar butt crack story. One day in eighth grade, Nelison decided to sit in the front row of her English class- something she usually shied away from. “I was trying to get over my insecurity of sitting in the front row. In the front you are looked at and you are in the spot light,” Neilson comments.  Wearing her favorite Abercrombie jeans in a touch of pink around the waist and a mid-drift purple t-shirt, Neilson positioned herself in the first row. “There was this loud, obnoxious girl sitting behind me. Suddenly she yells, “Brittany, you can see your butt crack!”” As the teacher tried to calm down the student’s ruckus, Neilson sat mortified in her desk.
“From then on I always wore a belt and never sat in the front until college.”
Neilson’s story as well as my own made us both consciously cautious of what was showing whenever we sat or bent down. It made me wonder why something that everyone has is so humorous, yet so embarrassing.
I decided to call upon a butt crack committee. University of Oregon Sophomore’s Monica Terveer, Clare Chisholm, Alex Nagel and I sat sprawled around Terveer and Chisholm’s apartment discussing everything from butt cracks, to thongs, to boxers, to underwear lines and much more.
Although sported by both girls and guys, it seems as if girls are the ones who struggle with the attack of a crack the most. “Sometimes when I think my butt crack is about to show I just announce it and it makes me feel less embarrassed because I’m the one who is acknowledging it,” Chisholm says.
“I do the classic girl-grab-back-loop-of jeans when I think my butt crack is about to show,” admits Terveer.
And from a guy’s perspective, Nagel states, “When I see a butt crack I laugh but I try to not think about it too much. You kind of don’t tell the person because it is taboo.” Terveer adds, “There is something private about our bodies. And people are drawn to it but not on purpose.”
Coincidentally, the butt crack committee and Neilson agreed that it is much more embarrassing to inform the person rather than just to let them bare all. ” It is kind of rude to go up to someone and say that their crack is hanging out,” comment Neilson, “ when you finally notice it yourself you can make up excuses like it’s only been hanging out for five seconds rather than acknowledging the truth that it has been hanging out all day.”
I guess ignorance truly is bliss.
In the end, we all have experienced some degree of the butt crack’s wrath. When a crack is exposed we laugh because the situation is often awkward and uncomfortable. But maybe we laugh because we know that person’s crack début very well could’ve been our own.
As for my bright blue thong, we’ve gone our separate ways. And as for the next time you spot a crack,  let yourself laugh, but only because you’ve been there before, whether you like to admit it or not.