president Bill Clinton was outlined in the Starr Report. In the 1990s, the thong became a garment of folkloric proportions after the White House intern Monica Lewinsky's affair with U.S. In order to persuade the few reluctant women left to wear the thong, a 'training' garment was invented called the Rio, or 'starter' thong, which rose more sedately up the sides to expose less of the buttocks. By 2003, it had become the fastest growing segment of women's underwear, making 'full-bottomed' panties almost obsolete. By the mid-1980s, however, the thong began to be appreciated as a practical garment in its own right. Frederick Mellinger, of popular underwear manufacturer Frederick's of Hollywood, realized the potential of this form of underwear Frederick's began to mass-market the thong, at first known as the 'scanty panty,' as an erotic item alongside crotchless or edible underwear.

Women demanded underwear that would remain invisible under outerwear and combat what became known as VPL, or Visible Panty Line. The thong was incorporated into the vocabulary of women's underwear in the 1980s in response to tighter and tighter trousers, especially jeans worn by women to display more of their gym-honed bodies in an era that emphasized muscled body shape.

Posing pouches worn by nude models in life classes since the Renaissance and in the nineteenth and early twentieth century in magazines promoting 'health culture' and featuring body builders could be seen as types of G-string in that they have a front part that covers the genitals and a string at the back that exposes the bottom. However, these types of coverings could be described as derivations of male underwear or garments associated with sports, such as jockstraps, which tend to reveal the muscle power of the legs and buttocks. The G-string was comprised of an elastic string that went around the waist and up between the buttocks and is popularly believed to have been originally added to the stripper's accoutrements on the occasion of the 1939 World's Fair in New York when Mayor Fiorello La Guardia demanded that the city's nude dancers cover themselves as a mark of respect for the thousands of visitors thronging the city. The stripper's G-string is another influence and has been an important part of the striptease artist's-or, more latterly, lap dancer's-wardrobe since the 1950s, when the taboo of displaying the vagina or any degree of pubic hair was paramount.

Why are they called g strings