[sebbie]

Guy's underwear then and now

I am beginning to understand why the mid-thigh compression-like shorts made of stretch fabric seems to have taken over so much of the men’s and boy’s underwear market in the past few years.

Guys generally like to feel horny, but this is also a topic of fear, but especially among guys who are still rather uncertain about their ability to control their bodily “urges”. For a lot of guys, this poses something of a constant dilemma of sorts—the sheer fun of feeling way neat down there versus the potential embarrassment of trying to deal with a situation whereby peers (male and maybe even female) notice what is happening to and with them.

For a lot of guys, the idea of wearing a brief as underwear or even as swimwear psychologically is too much. A guy may WANT to wear a brief, but the other stuff overwhelms. For better or worse, a lot of briefs are still associated with “being gay” and a lot of guys do not want to have to deal with that from a socialization perspective whether a guy considers himself to be gay or not. Still, a lot of guys deep down carry around a wonder about how a brief would not only look on their own bodies, but how a brief would feel down there. And the idea of being able to masturbate in, say, a swim brief, is something perhaps a lot of guys think about doing, but are at the same time also scared and apprehensive.

Then there are the standard cotton briefs, a men’s underwear design that has been around for maybe as long as a hundred years. But somehow these have gotten associated with what “old dudes” still wear. They are still sold but the marketing seems to cater to old dudes.

Going from my teen years into young adulthood in the 1950s and 60s, this underwear design was practically the ONLY thing that the males my age wore. The white cotton brief was in every guy’s wardrobe. They were cheap, readily available and, being white they did not mess up the washing process when simply tossed in the washer. And of course, the white briefs got washed a lot, given that they were the underwear of choice at the time for male self-abuse as well.

Colored briefs did not enter the scene to any degree until later, in the 1970s, when the manufacturers started to use colorfast dies that were not white, and we started moving toward fabrics that had some stretch Lycra, and also lower-rise briefs. More interestingly, the manufacturers started experimenting with flyless briefs, which some of my generation immediately deemed as “girlie” underwear or perhaps too revealing, or perhaps something that would appeal to guys who were openly or secretly gay or otherwise had a “feminine side”. The idea of engaging in self-abuse in a pair of these was also out there, and guys who liked to secretly buy a few pairs and keep them available to be used for this purpose. Of course, no one ever talked about that! “Hey mom I would like a pair of those skimpy colored briefs so I could use them to pleasure myself!” Not something any guy would say for sure. Still, all of this was floating around out there as ideas.

Then we went through this crazy period when guys wore very loose-fitting jeans and equally loose-fitting boxer shorts as their normal wear. Somehow no guy wanted to be caught wearing anything that fit snug and tight—underwear, jeans—lest he be teased and bullied for being a masturbator, which was only a short distance from being teased and bullied for being gay.

So, where are we currently? Skimpy no-fly colored briefs appear to be far less popular with guys than they were in the 1970s and 80s given what I see nowadays on the racks of the discount department stores. The white cotton briefs now seem to be marketed mainly to the old dudes who wore these in their youth, and somehow stuck with that all that time. And loose-fitting cotton boxers in a small blue plaid seem far less popular than they were 20 years ago as well

What seems to have largely taken its place is the underwear designed to look like either a swimmer’s jammer, or a pair of compression shorts or maybe a combination of both. I think the popularity of the current style is that guys saw the compression shorts dangling beneath the shorts worn by the pro and college basketball players and said that might be fun for me too.

The idea of wearing a short that fits really snug and provides compression to mid-thigh has strong appeal. But, equally important, guys have never lost the enthusiasm for using what they wear as underwear also as an aid to making them feel really good down there. You know, that kind of semi horny feeling that a guy’s head is somehow magically being drawn to his groin area, and some interesting initial sensations can quickly be evolve into something that feels really neat. The close fit to the thighs also provides an interesting element of eroticism at a place in the body a guy might not have realized was erotic.

There appears to be debate among manufacturers whether such gear needs to have a fly or not. The gear with a fly needs to be treated as strictly underwear to be worn under something else—jeans, loose-fitting shorts. But the ones without flies COULD be worn as if they were compression gear, particularly in a gym setting. The ideal garment makes a guy feel, well, more than a little horny but would be treated as normal guy wear and he would not be teased or bullied. The flyless shorts seem to pose a bit of a dilemma for a guy at the urinal but most discover techniques for going over the top, so to speak.

So, what about today? Guys never lose an enthusiasm for feeling good in the groin area. This ois very much a part of just being a guy and what that entails. There is no reason at all to be apprehensive Generally guys are quite anxious about this particularly when the issue becomes one of how the garment might affect how one feels down there moment-by-moment. The tight-fitting thigh length compression underwear fits neatly under the modern skinny jeans (which tend to be erotic in a different way) but also under loose fitting shorts and pants.

Today, for example, I needed to do some lawn mowing, and long pants are in order for this from a safety perspective. But under the long athletic style pants of course I wore my really snug compression underwear and, as another (padding) lawyer under that I have on a pair of my much-loved tighty whiteys, though a lot of guys probably would probably wear the compression underwear right next to their skin, as they are fixated of the feel of the tight stretch fabric clinging directly to the penis. I think it all feels neat regardless of the layers that are present, and this is part of the great enjoyment of being a guy.

The paths that guys have taken in a somewhat secret effort to enjoy their own bodies over in this respect have changed over the years, but the overall goal of a fondness for feeling horny has changed little if at all. We are still dealing with some of the most closely held “secrets” a guy has, particularly within the subject of how what guys might wear and do with and to their own bodies in the absence of a sexual partner. Still, some of the things that work when a guy is alone might be adapted to become part of a partner sex routine. A pair of snug-fitting compression underwear might plat an important role in a sexual encounter with a partner, and some of the ads for underwear seem to hint at this as well

Sebbie