I’m pretty sure I asked the same rhetorical question the last time she made a similar complaint (though it’s possible this strip is a repeat and my mind is going).
Either way, if the state if her underwear is bothering her so much, there’s a startlingly simple solution…
Comics I Don't Understand 
Y’all know the joke, I’m sure, that ends “He made his own lunch.”
Her nice things have been thru the laundry too many times..
Her pretty things have been manhandled.
I get her. 1) In a good life you wouldn’t have to consciously make an effort to buy pretty things. One would shop and hopefully a fine percentage would be pretty. This stops happening when you get older. 2) the act of *buy*ing the pretty things involves looking at oneself and realizing who unpretty you are that the act becomes are harder and more frustrating 3) when you approach a task with “I will go in there and I will leave with the pretty thing” and push up the stakes that it’s all or nothing you end up with psychological radiator belt snapping in your eye and 4) they just don’t *make* pretty things that look good on you any more and the more you trying the more you end up feeling like a pig trying to hide under makeup and you get depressed for weeks afterwards..
Upshot is you always end up at home wondering why you don’t have any of pretty things and frustrated its gotten so hard.
… and I have no idea of a *joke* that ends with “He made his own lunch”.
Three high-rise construction workers open their lunchboxes and one of them says “I swear, if I have to eat one more tuna sandwich, I’m going to jump.” The second one looks at his lunch and says “I know. If I see one more peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I’m going to jump.” And the third one says “One more bologna sandwich, and I’M going to jump.”
The next day the first guy opens his lunchbox, finds a tuna sandwich, and umps to his death. The second one, peanut butter and jelly, and HE jumps to his death. Likewise the third guy.
At their funerals, the widow of the first guy is crying uncontrollably. “If only I’d known… if only he’d told me how much he hated tuna, I’d have made him something else.” The second widow says “Me too. If only I’d known how much he hated peanut butter and jelly.” They glance over at the third woman. “Don’t look at me,” she says, “my husband always made his own lunch.”
Note that Janis uses the term “lingerie”. To me that implies sexy undergarments. She is self-conscious and hoped Arlo would respond with something more comforting than that.
Now, the joke about the construction workers is a JIDU. Why does the 3rd guy keep making bologna sandwiches if he hates them so much?
“If only he’d told me how much he hated tuna, I’d have made him peanut butter and jelly.”
“If only he’d told me how much he hated peanut butter and jelly, I’d have made him tuna.”
The problem with pretty lingerie is that is made of flimsy materials that don’t hold up, AND that the stuff that looks good often isn’t very good for wearing all day. Over time, Janis’ practical nature has pushed aside all the frilly things that looked good but weren’t effective. There’s a cartoon about 50 pages into “Beaucoup Arlo and Janis” where she’s wearing a basic one-piece swimsuit, and Arlo is chasing her all over the first three panels. In the fourth panel, she says “now, be serious, do I look OK?” That is also a factor… she doesn’t NEED fancy lady undergarments to hold Arlo’s interest, so the fancy lady undergarment budget was ceded to other things over the years, meaning that as things wore out, they were not replaced.
Packaging is nice, but it’s not the wrapping paper that makes Christmas great.
@Mark M, presumably Bologna Guy was either suicidal or incredibly vulnerable to peer pressure.
Maybe there was just a really, really great sale locally on cheap bologna, and he couldn’t resist?
Maybe he just didn’t know how to make any other kind of sandwich.
Mark M, you have fallen into the overanalysis pit, like so many have here. The ‘made his own lunch’ scenario makes no sense whatever. That’s the joke. FWIW, I think it’s pretty funny.
Another sandwich joke. A construction worker took a room in a boarding house, with the house providing breakfast and supper at the table and a bag lunch at breakfast time for the worker to take to work with him.
At the end of the first day the proprietor asked the worker how the lunch was. “There was only one sandwich. That’s not enough.”
The second day the proprietor packed two sandwiches. “How was the lunch?” “There were only two sandwiches.”
Third day. Three sandwiches. “How was the lunch?” “There were only three sandwiches.”
Well, by now the proprietor was pretty annoyed. He bought an immense loaf of French bread, sliced it down the middle and stuffed it full of every kind of lunch meat, cheese, lettuce, tomato and anything else he could find.
That night: “How was the lunch?” The worker looked him straight in the eye and said, “I see we are back to one sandwich.”
Woozy, that was very insightful. Are you sure you’re not a woman?
As for the construction worker joke, I could never get to the laugh because I couldn’t stop thinking how stupid they’d have to be to not switch sandwiches.
@Mark M: The “he made his own lunch” joke is sometimes told about construction workers of three different ethnicities, in which case the third construction worker is portrayed as being of a dumber ethnicity than the other two.
In addition to Woozy’s excellent answer, it may be that Janis is self-conscious about buying pretty and non-matronly lingerie, imagining that sales clerks and other shoppers are thinking, “Buying something like that at her age!”.
Surprising response from Arlo; usually he wistfully remembers diaphanous tops and bikinis, and you’d expect him to encourage her to buy pretty lingerie.
In the third panel Arlo has a large smile. Only Arlo sees her in her underwear, and he’s even happier to see her out of her underwear, so why does style matter?
Janis doesn’t see things the same way. She wants to wear pretty things, even if no one sees them. And she might take Arlo’s comment as showing disinterest in seeing her in her underwear, which makes her feel ugly.
Mark in Boston – I heard this joke – sort of – from my dad when I was of elementary school age or younger.
Bit of background – as Bill has mentioned before – in the 1940s or so through the 1970s there were a number of hotels in the Catskill mountains where people from the general NYC area would go in the summer. The various hotels catered to different ethnic groups with Jewish/kosher hotels being a large part of them. The hotel price included all meals and people would order and eat a lot.
Dad’s version (hear a Jewish inflictive voice when the man is saying something, please) – A man goes to a Catskills hotel. The first night at dinner the waiter brings one slice of bread. “One slice of bread – I need a lot of bread – bring me more from now on.” Next night the waiter brings two slices of bread – he repeats that he needs a lot of bread. This goes on for several days (joke condensed so it does not go on for several days). Then the waiter gets an idea he will give the guest an entire loaf of bread. (Bread not sold sliced then.) The waiter walks into the dining room and puts down the serving with the loaf of bread split in half. “What back to 2 slices of bread???”
As to Janis – in the old days she bought underwear to interest Arlo, now she buys it for it for comfort and fit. She is just noticing this change and misses what she used to buy in her younger days. (Plus her bras might need to be a bit less cute lingerie and more supportive than they used to be.)