Neither Holy Nor Roman

[Little BabyDoll Christine]

Just as the "Holy Roman Empire" was secular and German. So "rubber panties" have not been made of rubber, for the most part, for about 55 years.

However that is what they have been called for just ever by real poeple, that is "civilians and that is what they are still called. Now also "rubber diapers"

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=rubber%20diapers

That term is what most of us grew up with. Mostly "plastic pants" seems to be used by etiher those for whom accuracy is a necessity, such as vendors or the like, I do not know what medical persons call them calloquially, and those who want to to show their accruacy as part of being AB/DL. I grew up with "rubber panties" and avoid "plastic panties" because it implies that I know more than I should or that I am part of something (this latter is true since I am here). There are others here wo share that trait, I have seen them post

There is an even more archaic term in use, even as of last week. "lunch pail". A lunch pail was literally that and NOT a lunch box, a pail that had slide-out compartments that the parts of the lunch was in. I have not heard of them being used in over 70 years. The drill was this. The father usually worked in a mill or other place within walking distance for a child. Thie children would be home from school for lunch, or as we call it dinner. Now in the working-class places like Fall River. "dinner" was not just a sandwich or two and some other things, it was a full meal on a plate with other things like coffee. The mother would make it and pack it up in a lunch pail and one of the children would take to to where their father worked at the noon hour

Now, I have never actually seen a lunch pail but I have seen rubber panties as late as 1955

Nor is a thermos bottle a Thermos bottle

[aleyxsis]

i have rubber panties they would keep the rian off of a tree in the freakin rain forest also i have a lunch pail hee hee

[Diapered Jason]

Plastic panties refer to panties made of Polyvinyl Chloride, Nylon, Polyurethane, etc. and is a generalization, whereas rubber panties are actually more of a specific title than plastic panties in that they just refer to rubber. You know this in regard to technicality as you eluded in the thread title, but still even informally, I have never heard plastic panties being called rubber panties and vice versa though I am sure people do that. That said, when people say plastic panties, they generally refer to PVC and not the newer plastic panties made out of polyurethane, which are taking over the market, so I see where you are coming from. The difficult thing about all this that I often see is the panties venders say we are selling plastic panties, but you do not know for sure what material it actually is. You can assume it is PVC, but that is now an assumption. Sometimes they will say vinyl, to which you know it is PVC, but the word vinyl alone does actually refer to any polymer that has only carbon atoms along its backbone. Lets not dwell though. I can understand a vender not wanting to give away the exact material specifications, but they should still tell you what material you are getting with as little ambiguity as possible.

And that is my essay on why I do not like some plastic panties sellers. lol

[Little BabyDoll Christine]

From what I see, you were born in 1958. I did not see any real rubber baby panties beyond 1955. However there always seems to have been rubber adult and childrens' panties. made by Bitner. between 1950 and 1963, if I did not see at least 1 changes per week, something was wrong and I saw plenty between then and 1968 when I saw the last one I remember, and in no case do I remeber seeing them past 1955, which pair I clearly remember and the circumstances under which I saw them

My parents' generation called them "rubber panties" and baby boomers picked it up from them. The baby boom was just that and the number of births was huge, so you have two generations, one of which is huge, using that term over the course of about 70+ years or 3-1/2+ generations; 61 years or 3 generations that I can speak of directly, plus it was about 90% likely that this is the original term for waterproof panties so this is not going away any time soon

Other terms are "baby pants/panties" and they were also called "baby bloomers" but I have not heard that more than 5 or 6 times so that may be gone by now. In 1960 the cartoon show "Quick Draw McGraw" came on which had 3 caftoons. Quick Draw McGraw, Augie Doggie and Snooper and Blabbermouse. A reccurrent villain in the latter was "Baby Pants Pinky" (a parody of the many "Baby Face" hoods)

[Diapered Jason]

Sure, but I still do not hear it that often. Like I said, I have only heard rubber panties when they were actually referring to panties made of rubber. Other than that, I hear plastic panties all the time. Also, aren't bloomers different from panties in that they usually extend down the leg a little?

[Little BabyDoll Christine]

We would have to know the context in which you hear it most. Even the Urban Dictionary has it as I know it to be. If you hear it most in the ABDL or medical context since these are almost unused with babies and are hard to find in baby departments or pharmacies (I call a place that sells musical instruments a "drug store"), which has been the case since the late 1980's, then that makes sense

[petti100]

About 1990, I passed by a co-worker who was a young mother making out a list of things to bring on her family's vacation. Plastic pants were on the list. Not rubber pants, not vinyl pants, but plastic pants. i had always used the term rubber pants or baby pants, but then, I'm a "baby boomer". I also noticed how store ads in the eighties called them vinyl pants, at least the ones I saw ( I tended to notice that kind of thing. Never could figure out why....) Manufacturers from the fifties and sixties called them "baby panties" or "baby pants" Now, my memory isn't that clear back then, and it is my recollection that they were most often called "rubber pants" or "rubber panties" back then. But it is quite clear that the manufacturers called them "baby pants" or "baby panties" because that was what they called them on their boxes or bags that the panties came in. You see, I collect vintage baby panties so I have some evidence of this. Playtex for example, referred to them as a "baby panty". Valex, a division of Tampex, called them "baby panties" on their earlier boxes, and "baby pants" on later boxes for the same thing. I can't recall a case when a manufacturer called them "plastic pants", although that term seemed to stick in later years. In terms of correctness, they are, in fact, panties. They have no fly or long legs to one's ankles ( point that Christene had pointed out some time in earlier postings ). So, it would seem that the mothers and grandmothers chose to continue calling them rubber pants, or later, plastic pants for some reason.

The humiliation factor of being told that you were going to be put back in rubber pants sent a clear message to the child with a continence problem, whether it came from his chums or his parents. They clearly were a baby's article of clothing. So the expression would even be used by those, such as bullies, that wanted to chide a poor young soul by implying that the poor kid was a baby. I personally liked it when it was said to me because I secretly wanted to be put back into diapers. My point is that I think there was a humiliation factor associated with the expression, "rubber pants" that said, " you're a baby" or " you're acting like a baby" when used as a threat or form of ridicule.

Then, to confuse the situation further, the British refer to them as "rubbers" or, in some cases, pilchers. The Germans refer to them as gummihosen or windelhosen. But whatever they're called they are still baby panties to me.

So there you have it, petti100's rambling on what baby panties were called and why. I hope that you, as a reader of this, find a bit of humor in all this, and take it with a grain of plastic....

Oh yes. And don't do what I did on my first visit to a U.K. pub for supper. I asked for a napkin at the table and the waitress started giggling to herself. Never could figure out why....

[Little BabyDoll Christine]

That matches. Most people write "plastic pants" and as I said, those who sell them use that term. but conversationally and by "civilians" it is "rubber" except for ABDL's and those who deal with them directly. I wish I knew how old you are

I thin we can figure out why the waitress was laughing at "napkin": I will let that drop; periold

[Floaty_Boy]

When I was growing up in the 70s, my grandmothers used the term "rubber pants" exclusively, while my mother used "rubber pants" and "plastic pants" interchangeably. As far as she was concerned, rubber and plastic were the same thing. Outside of that localized group, I never heard anyone even speak of such things (I was the youngest in my family, so when I was finally dry -- not til I was 9 at night -- nobody had reason to talk about them). Once disposables really took over, I never heard anyone I knew who had diaper-age children even talking about any kind of overpants. As a funny bit, though, I have some old Sears catalogs from the 70s, and they use the term "waterproof pants" in their index...

--Floaty

[Little BabyDoll Christine]

In the late 1990's, about '99, the talk show host Howie Carr, WRKO 680 AM Boston was bemoaning the lack of waterproof panty use by parents of diaper-age children, especially with regard to municipal pools and he used only the word "rubber" and he was about 47. and he has done that topic twice since then, the last time in about 2007, same reference to "rubber" pants

Most of those old general catalogs used "waterproof" and I have seen some Brits about 25-30 years younger than I call them just "rubbers"

[Floaty_Boy]

Browsing eBay today, actually saw a new item listing for infant training pants and "rubber pants". So obviously some people are still using the term despite the fact that actual rubber pants apparently haven't been around for quite a while! (Wouldn't know, personally, by the time I came along, all I ever saw were vinyl pants.)

--Floaty

[Fontaine]

*psst* The holy roman empire, was by in large, Christian. Thus it is holy. It is considered Roman though because of Italy which actually shared most of it's national identity with the Germans. Actually one of the biggest reasons unification took so long was because many people thought it wasn't right to break up Italy and Germany although at that point Germans and Northern Italians were still very similar, the southern Italians had become much more mixed. *runs away*

[freswith]

I was born in 1949, and I expect I was in rubber pants for a while, but I do not remeber them ats such. I so remember a rubberised romper that I used as fancy dress when I was about 4. (horrible thing!). All my association is with PVC pants, clear ones.

I have no fixation with rubber, in fact I have a gag reflex. I have tried a baby's bottle and found no stimulus whatsoever. My mother despised dummies (pacifiers) as "dirty" saying they fell out of a babies' mouths and were put back in "covered in germs". I have never tried a dummy - I probably never had one in my life - and am not particularly anxious to do so.

I used to watch a neighbour's child being nappied. He was about a year younger than me. I do not recall what kind of pants he used, but he didn't seem to wear any at night - just endless layers of towelling. I was interested by he whole process, and I can't have been more than three; so much for "infantile amnesia"! I have always been a bit embarrassed by the way babies are treated without the slightest regard for their dignity. I can remember incidents from those days, and I shudder.

My mother also had a down on baby pants - she said they caused nappy rash, and were only worn when visiting. This is generally born out by various baby pictures.

[Little BabyDoll Christine]

I was put in, and can remember, both

[Amyuser]

Well Christine Fall River is a wonderful place although i spent my vacations in Glouster and Rockport ,your town could make the fudge .

i grew up with rubber pants , and have kinda trained myself to say plastic to go along with the mainstream maybe that stream needed a higher dose of Flomax because Rubber Pants are back, and i have mine and love them

if you have to wear them everyday no matter what, well i do have a choice i could drive around peeing as i go but that would not be tolerated very long, I might as well enjoy the products i have to use and rubber pants are what i think i wore as a child because i remember that there was cloth diapers and rubber pants on the shelf in the bathroom closet when i was a child,and since i'm the youngest of three and got everything previously used i would think that i was the final user i remember the rubber pants and wearing them but not specifically the diapers.

i also remember the lunch pail and the thermos that wasn't and of course the Chicago Typewriter and you did not want to read the news it printed

[Little BabyDoll Christine]

The thing is, the "mainstream [ordinary folk]" callled plastiic panties "rubber" as I have shown, practically to this day, or at least c2006 and what was done for 3 generations was not going to change in 5 years. I did not train myself as I felt that it would indicate that I "knew too much" and I had always heard "rubber pant(ie)s"

If you were born in 1968 and the youngest, I would think that the oldest was born, at the earliest, in 1950 and could have been in rubber panties, but they would have had to last 18 years. I had not seen rubber baby/toddler panties since 1955. Now rubber pantis for children may have been around becuase I understand that Bitner made them well into the 80's. I had both kinds of baby panties put on me and I can remember it and that was when I was, at the oldest 3-1/4 and seems much younger. Strangley enough, I do not remeber the whole diapering, just the panties being ready to be put on me and my other clothes being put in place after the diaper and panties. The second time that I remeber, I also remember being in my crib and feeling down and feeling the plastic ones that I remembered being made ready to be put on me, so at the time I must have figured that that was what was done. but what I remember of that changing, I was still in my daytime clothes when I was changed, not in my nighttime ones. I only remember the peach rubber ones being made ready, not being put on me or anything else after that and it seems to be an older memory. In both cases the room was the same with me looking at the light on the wall and the lighted wall

[Marcuss]

plastic nylon and vinyl even rubber they are all "waterproof pants"

btw my favorite place to get waterproof pants of all types and at really good prices is http://www.myprotex.com/

Good luck beating their sale prices.

[Little BabyDoll Christine]

*psst* The holy roman empire, was by in large, Christian. Thus it is holy. It is considered Roman though because of Italy which actually shared most of it's national identity with the Germans. Actually one of the biggest reasons unification took so long was because many people thought it wasn't right to break up Italy and Germany although at that point Germans and Northern Italians were still very similar, the southern Italians had become much more mixed. *runs away*

Everything was nominally Christian; All monarchs claimed to rule by divine fiat of some kind The HRE was a political organization created by the sword. and since when were the names "Hohenzollern" and Honenstofen", or even "Hapsburg" Italian? It got its name from the fact that one of the popes crowned Corolus Magnus to the title of Emperor in Rome on Xmas day 800 so the story goes, after all his conquests. It was more an act of hope, to say to the world that the Roman Empire was reborn. Then his sons divvied it up and some of propspered and some shrivelled. In the Battle of Hastings, the Pope and the HRE supported the Normandian side as separate entities. Sometime in the Middle Ages, the seat of the Empire moved to Germany or what would become Germany. Northern Italy was ruled by Austria and was naturally Germanic by virtue of the invasion of the Lombards ("Long beards") and somewhere, France and Southern Italy dropped out of the mix as parts of Italy were occupied by Normans, which land was a Duchy ruled by a Duke and founded by a Viking named Rollo by threat of force against what would be the seed of modern France, then Italy broke up into a group of feuding city-states. By the late 1500 France was so anti Hapsburg that they even did deals with the infiidel Turks to thwart the Holy Alliance which had been victorious in the Battle of Lepanto which was fought at the behest of the Genoans who wanted to settle some trading scores with the Turks and enlisted the aid of Don John of Austria. I believe it was Napoleon who put the end to the Holy Roman Empire, which by then was an empire in name only as Germany and Italy had broken into principalities and duchies, to be united by Voh Bismarck and Garibaldi (Risorgiamento). At any rate, the quote is not mine bot that of some major European person or historian, I forget which, and since they, being either European or historian know more about Europe, history and European history than you or I, I will not gainsay them

EDIT, just went to check some things.

http://en.wikipedia....ly_Roman_Empire

It was not founded by Chalemange but did include the territories that he conquered and Christianized

Now I remember why I hated Eurpoean History and from whence we got "can of worms"

[dmavn]

The whole plastic pants/ rubber pants thing may be a cultural locational thing as well. At least where I grew up I had ever only known them as plastic pants. Of course quite a few terms seem to be changing around now days as well ie. The seeming need to call anything that is one piece a onesie. I just attribute it to the general laziness of people to actually research what they are talking about.

[babylin]

Hey Blokes! They are called "Pilchers"

Happiness Is Wearing Cotton Diapers

[Mommy's Diaperboy]

I wore rubber pants over my diapers when my Mom was diapering me and have tried them as an adult, but the ones I bought at at medical supply store leaked. The terms rubber pants and baby pants have always resonanted with me I associate both with being a baby. After I learned to read I loved to check out the baby prodycts in the Sears and Montgomery ard catalogs that came to our home -- I'd look up baby products even before toys or sporting goods. I vividly recall finding a listing for "Extra Large Baby Pants" which were described as being "For the big baby who is still in diapers". That phrase was one of the most wonderful I had ever heard -- all of a sudden it was OK to be a big baby and still be wearing diapers (wish Mom had agreed!). To this day I prefer the term "baby pants" and am looking forward to getting my first pair from baby-pants.com.

[Little BabyDoll Christine]

The term "rubber pant(ies)s" should have died out 50 years ago to be stricly accurate, but did not, hence my use of Voltaire's quote. I have heard and seen it used to within the first decade of the twenty first century and I preume that it has acquired the status of "kleenex" and "coke".

I would have liked to be able to do an age read on who uses what term

Also, the forward-facing leg openings were not a feature of early plastic panties. As we have seen, some remember the panty material being turned under the diaper. The classic rubber baby panty could strect so shape was not really a matter of concern. Plastic could not, and very many of the earliest plastic panties, if not all of them, were home-made, rubber being in short supply in the 1943-47 timeframe. The early plastic panties had long sides and the legs were not higly angled from crotch to side and were not "forward facing", but even on front and back. They were still very full with a very wide crotch. the net result was that, in use, they tended to "bloomer" or mor correctly "pantaloon" like 16th century "slops" and were also called "baby bloomers" but in fact were not bloomers or even pantaloons. This trait appears to have been gone by 1952. The idea being that they were to accommodate as many diaper types and diapering styles as possible. I would conclued that the adult equivalent would be 12-14" down the side seams with a 14" crotch and still very full. Size would be more a function of the elastics with the body of the panty being maybe in two sizes. Thus with two sizes of panty body and controlling the specific size by the elastics it may have been quite easy to make panties to fit from birth to a teenager. From what I understand, the earliest plastic panties were homemade in the middle 1940's. as were, in all likelihood diapers. They were probably of a simpler desing and meant to last as most families anticipated at least three babies and the age of the 7+-child family was only a generation ago and people just wanted things to last with as little work and expense as possible. You would be surprised at what was homemade. The modern home built after 1955 could not accommodate the level of self-sufficiency that the old-timers would have demanded. Just look at how people reacteid to the power-outages of Hurricane Irene. When Carol hit in 1954 nobody complained about that and we were out of power for 4 days and some were out for well over a week. there were 5 of us in one house, we had a fireplace so we could cook and have light from that and candles and we had canned goods (frozen vegetables were unknown) and dry foods and things like meats could be delivered by persons who did that kind of things for a living, when I was four, grocery shopping was done by giving an order to a person who made the rounds in a large van and they would deliver the goods later. Given the modern way of life, it is no wonder the Irene had such a paralyzing and debilitating effect. Between 1954 and 1960 we had several power-outing storms. It was sort of an adventure

Anyway, as the third child born in '45 it is quite possible that the plastic panties that were put on both me and my 2 year younger sister were homemade. The color was a kind of frosted ecru that appears to have been a common color for plastic even into the early 1960's as I have seen typwriter and ophthamological measuring machine covers of that color and texture during that timeframe