The Waistband Dilemma

One of the things about diapers that my mind has gone through many cycles on is the waistband dilemma: should I hide my diaper waistband or not?

Let me jump back in time just a little to show what I mean.

Approximately midway through the Fall semester last year, after revealing myself as a diaper lover to a friend and being accepted for it, I bought diapers for the first time in about six months. I jumped pretty quickly into wearing them to eat, to class, and in other public situations. But I told myself that it would be a bad idea to risk exposing the diaper to someone. If they saw even my waistband, they might become uncomfortable or have some other unpleasant emotional reaction, and I would have to endure whatever might come with being found out as a diaper wearer.

So, I made sure to hide my waistband as best I could. I kept a constant awareness of how my actions were moving my clothing, changing the way I moved to keep my waistband shrouded and pulling my shirt down whenever I even suspected my waistband might be in danger of being exposed. All of this caused me anxiety, in large part because it seemed like it might come off as suspicious.

Toward the end of the semester, I got more ‘high’ on the acceptance of my friend and tired of stressing myself out over my diaper, an object that can help me relax if I let it. As a result, I grew more and more serious about the idea of just ‘letting go’ and letting my waistband show or not show as it pleased. I knew from tests in front of a mirror that it normally wouldn’t show. If it did and anyone noticed it, I would explain the situation and hopefully be accepted; if someone didn’t accept me, maybe they just weren’t someone I should hang out with.

I ran this idea by my friend. I don’t remember exactly how she reacted, but it was positively enough that I decided to try it. It was harder than I expected to break my old waistband habits, though. As funny as this sounds, I had to really focus to get myself to let go.

I remember doing this one time in particular. It was shortly after I ran my idea by my friend, and I was eating dinner with her and an older girl I didn’t really know.

Throughout the meal, I tried to force myself to relax about my waistband. Then, when we got up to leave, I reached to put my phone in my pocket and the corner of my phone snagged my shirt and pulled it up far enough to show about an inch of my waistband.

Nothing like that had ever happened before, and it really freaked me out. It felt like, by purposefully neglecting to hide my waistband, I had almost purposefully exposed it. And I definitely worried that if my friend saw it, she would think I had done it on purpose.

I didn’t want accidental diaper flashes to be mistaken as intentional, and I realized then that it might be easy for them to be. That slowed down my transition to ‘letting go,’ and soon the process halted completely when the semester ended and I went home for winter break.

Shortly after the break began, I had another mental shift regarding my waistband. One evening, I went to a bar with my parents and their friends. We sat inside, but soon I went outside to sit by myself and think.

The bar was in a town center, and next to it was a concert area. There, some people were setting up the stage for something, and one of them had brought their toddler. The entire top half of the back of the girl’s diaper showed above her pants. As a result, I got kinda jealous and I wished I could go around with my diaper showing that much and not be judged for it.

Not long after having that thought, my eyes focused on a couple sitting at a table in front of me (but not super close to me). Soon, the man got up, I assume to use the bathroom. As he stood up, he pulled his shirt down like I always did as I stood up when I was wearing a diaper. But he almost definitely wasn’t wearing a diaper, and he didn’t have any more-obvious reason to pull his shirt down (he wasn’t overweight, his underwear wasn’t exposed, etc.).

I felt a connection between the two things I’d just seen, an answer waiting to be found, so I explored them in my mind. I came to realize that yeah, the kid could show her diaper, but she wasn’t aware of what was going on; she couldn’t be expected to be aware, either, given her age. Adults, on the other hand, can have an awareness of their clothing and act based on it. Sometimes, that action may not be based on anything anyone else sees, like in the case of the man I saw, but it’s still a normal thing for an adult to do.

I decided that since I’m an adult who has the capacity to be aware of and adjust my clothing to fit societal expectations, and that such a thing is normal, not suspicious, I should do that. However, the amount I was adjusting myself before the break was a bit much, so I decided to cut back to more normal levels and stick with my plan about being found out in case normal levels weren’t enough. When I got back to school for the Spring semester, I told my friend about my decision and how I made it. She seemed to support it.

Later on in the semester, I had another change of mind about whether to hide my waistband. I don’t think there were any specific events that led to the change that time, but I do recall considering the topic while standing in front of a mirror and finding a different perspective. I realized that the amount of my diaper that normally comes above my pants probably isn’t enough to cause any major negative emotions for anyone. Plus, by that time, I was more okay with potentially being found out than ever before. So, really, I was only still working to hide my waistband (though it was decreased work) in order to spare other people from feelings/reactions that I no longer thought were very likely.

I took a picture of how much my waistband showed above my pants and showed it to my friend when we were hanging out one weekend; I wanted her opinion: Would it really be a big deal if anyone saw this little of my diaper? Could that really bother anyone?

[Fun fact: The picture I showed her is the same one I use as my site header, site thumbnail, and profile pictures right now.]

She agreed with me that it wouldn’t be a big deal or be likely to bother anyone, so I decided once again to ‘let go’ and let my waistband show or not show as it pleased. This time, I followed through more than before, and I ended up feeling more relaxed as a result. Though, sometimes, I still felt like my waistband was showing at a bad time, so I made sure it wasn’t. And, at the end of the semester, I was under enough stress with school that I didn’t want to run into the extra stress of someone finding me out, so I made sure my waistband was hidden more often then.

After all that, I doubt it will be a surprise that I’ve been thinking about this topic again recently. And, as you may know from my previous posts, I’m super optimistic right now about the potential results of being found out and I doubt most people who saw the waistband of a diaper would think past the physical look of it. So, you may be able to guess that, despite slight additions and adjustments to my viewpoint on waistbands, it has largely stayed the same as it ended up last semester.

To explain my recent thoughts, let me start at that prediction I made that most people wouldn’t think past the physical look of the waistband of a diaper if they saw one. If true, that would mean there isn’t anything past the physical look of the waistband that could potentially bother the average person.

But, that said, the physical look could bother an average person to some degree. If someone thought of your waistband as ugly or incongruous or something, they might be a little bothered by your look.

To that, I say: So what? All kinds of people make unpleasant wardrobe choices and have unpleasant wardrobe malfunctions all the time—ones that would be considered unpleasant by few as well as ones that would be considered unpleasant by many. I’d like to think of a visible diaper waistband as a wardrobe element that would be considered unpleasant by few, but we really don’t know. Nevertheless, a diaper waistband wouldn’t really stand out against the vast array of other potentially-objectionable wardrobe elements we see every day, if you think about it.

Let’s consider an example of a wardrobe choice I saw just a few days ago that had way more potential to be unpleasant than a diaper waistband: I was working (selling snow cones as a summer job) in a park on Tuesday. At one point, I had a break from customers, so I sat down and my eyes fell upon a set of picnic tables nearby. Standing next to one of them, possibly recovering from a jog, was a fairly muscular middle-aged man wearing nothing but spandex underwear. The underwear was tight enough that I could clearly see the outline of his penis and testicles (then, when he eventually walked away, his butt). Please, try to convince me that even a constantly visible diaper waistband would be more of a potential eye-sore than that.

Anyway, thanks for reading! Please press the Like button if you enjoyed this post, and if you want to chime in on this subject, please type up your thoughts in a comment!