Date:  Tue, 25 Nov 1997 19:52:37 EST
From:  Larry Horn <LHORN[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU>
Subject: Re: G-string

Norman Roberts writes,

>New York columnist Earl Wilson (1940s) did a piece on the G-string. I
>recall reading it in his book in the late forties. Sorry to have forgotten
>the title, but an aging memory has its problems. He wrote that the G-string
>on the bass was low, hence the name of the article worn by showgirls
>because it was worn low. He also commented about the article appearing in
>low places.

Ah, Earl Wilson. There's a name to conjure with; I remember his columns in the
New York Post when I was growing up in the fifties, back when it was a
progressive tabloid rag instead of a right-wing tabloid rag. But this sounds
like an urban legend (if I may use the term anachronistically). If the
G-strings of the showgirls were morphologically and functionally analogous to
those (or to the gee strings) of those 19th century male Native Americans, the
explanatory force of the Earl of Broadway's proposal strikes me as, shall we
say, a mite scanty.    --Larry