Here’s a story which I am reproducing for its entertainment value, but which I do not seriously credit. I found the story in the October 1967 Monsieur magazine, which is an unfamiliar men’s magazine title that offers no particular reason to think that its “reporting” is anything but fiction with the serial numbers filed off. There’s nothing in the article that resembles a name or a source or a credible reason to think that “reporter” (self-described) Hoyt McAfee did anything but pull this notion of “pantie chastity fun belts” out of his own masturbatory imagination, even though he claims to have “sounded out” a “representative cross-section” of the “girls by the dozen” who were (he said) wearing the things.
So the story goes, the “pantie chastity fun belt” is a jewelry-like hip bracelet, easily removed, that young ladies were wearing at the time as a symbol of their loyalty to their lovers going off to the war in Viet Nam. Yeah, no, I might as well just let old Hoyt continue this confabulation in his own words:
CHASTITY FUN BELTS
It has become the rage among thousands of American girls whose boys friends are stationed overseas, or who’re off to the war in Vietnam; they call it the Chastity Fun Belt — an enticing and abbreviated garment any novelty manufacturer can whip together for them. But the device means just what it implies. In short, it’s all in fun.
A girl dons it as a tribute to that special guy in her life. He may he bound for duty in one of the hot spots of the world – particularly Vietnam. During his final hours with his No. 1 girl, he wonders out loud what will happen to her.
Will she go stepping with other fellows as soon as he leaves? Sensing what’s bothering him, his special girl flashes him a fetching smile and speaks up: “Hey, Honey, I’ve got a surprise for you. Take a peek at what I’m wearing tonight.”
With which she hoists her skirt high enough for him to glimpse her novelty garment. Fashioned much like an enlarged bracelet, it encircles her upper thighs becomingly. She goes on to explain:
“Several of my girl friends wear one just like it. It’s their way of letting their best boy friend know they’ll he true to him so long as he deserves such devotion.”
He, the war-bound GI, laughs heartily over what she has just shown him. She joins him. Then they may settle hack for a bit of serious discussion. During the course of it, she makes it clear that she will remain his girl – and wear the Pantie Chastity Fun Belt – unless she finds out he’s running around with foreign girls.
Sometimes she can find this out by what he put into his letters to her — or what he omits from them. Once convinced that he’s playing the field, she will feel perfectly free to shed the Chastity Fun Belt.
This latest rage for wearing The Belt originated among the hordes of lonely government girls in Washington. D. C. not long ago. One day, while doing research for her boss in the Congressional Library, a pretty secretary came across a drawing of a real chastity belt. An accompanying note explained that European men forced their wives and girl friends to wear this hellish device during their Crusades to the Holy Land centuries ago.
That night the G-girl told some of her colleagues about the belt. One of them, in turn, hit upon the idea of spoofing it. Whereupon, five of them trooped off to a gadget manufacturer and explained what they had in mind. One day later he had completed it — an easy-to-slip-on-and-off Pantie Chastity Fun Belt.
By contrast, remember that the original belt was a cruel and confining device…
[several paragraphs of boring and spurious chastity belt “history” omitted — Bacchus]
As amazing as it may seem, the notorious chastity belt occasionally pops up in the news to this day. Some time back, for instance, Jean Duval, a 43-year-old Paris (France) druggist forced his sexpot young wife to don an old, cruel, confining chastity belt.
After considerable suffering from it, she went to the police and complained about the indignity heaped upon her. Her husband was arrested and brought to trial. Turning to the judge, he whined: “But, Your Honor, she was young, sexy, and other men coveted her. It (the chastity belt) was the only way I could keep her faithful to me.” Stern-faced and unimpressed, the judge sentenced him to two years in the pokey!
As to the popular device now worn by puckish girls around the nation, it can — as has already been explained — be donned and doffed freely. No locksmith, no kind of key, figures in the picture.
In various seaport cities, where sailors and marines frequently spend their liberty hours, girls by the dozens wear it. This reporter has made it a point to sound out a representative cross-section of them.
One leggy blonde told me her Pantie Chastity Fun Belt gave her a “feeling of distinction.” She added: “I like my guy well enough to wear it while he’s in Saigon. Five and six times a week I receive his sweet letters. No one can tell me he’s running around over there with B-girls or dance-hall girls.”
But a saucy redhead explained her philosophy in these words: “My boyfriend and I had a lot of fun talking about mine. He thought it was cute. And he promised me he’d be true to me — even if he has to do overseas duty five or six months or longer.”
With a wag of her head, she assured me: “I’ll wear my Chastity Fun Belt till he comes home — or another guy comes along and makes me want to take it off!”
