Suddenly everyone cares what’s under our pants.

So as you may have gathered from my previous posts, I’ve been thinking recently about adulthood and responsibility and my own navel. Out there on the infowebnet superhighway though, people are deep thinking about a different manly subject: what’s under our pants. No, no–not that, they’re always on about that; I mean what’s worn over it.

Hamilton Nolan over at Gawker was preoccupied a while back with the European trend “that threatens to erode the American way of life: Evolution of the luxury men’s underwear market.” The metrosexual advertising of package-presenting tighty whities makes him fear for a future where all become “Australian man-whores” and has him begging:

We beg you: do not allow yourself to be mesmerized by the perceived sexiness of these products. Think of the men. Underwear is one of our final refuges from the rampaging gods of luxury. America is not David Beckham; America is Ralph Kramden. And nobody wants to see Ralph Kramden’s jock, wonder or otherwise.

Further evidence? The butt-lifting gitch of designer Andrew Christian. “Great John Wayne’s ghost, is bubble-butt now sought after among men!?!” (Perhaps The Walrus blogosphere’s reigning man in France can weigh in: Andrew, are the butts especially bubbly on the football pitch over there?)

This comes during an American presidential race that has shown an unseemly interest in the undergarments of candidates. First, you will remember, we were treated to an entire news cycle devoted to whether or not Mitt Romney wore Mormon holy undergarments. He wouldn’t say.

More recently, the journalist impersonators at US Weekly asked Barack Obama whether (as Kramer memorably put it) he prefers flip-flopping or if his boys need a house. “I don’t answer those humiliating questions. But whichever one it is, I look good in ‘em.” This was a more artful, if less modest, answer than Bill Clinton gave when he was asked the same boxers-or-briefs question back in 1994. Apparently that was when the question became a litmus test for presidents. Bill elaborated on the subject in a speech to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, poking fun at his equivocating (”Didn’t inhale,” “Depends on what is is”) nature:

Now, this is serious—I do want to take an opportunity to come clean on a statement I made earlier this week. In an appearance on MTV, I was asked a question about my undergarments, more specifically, whether I wore boxers or briefs. I answered, “I wear briefs,” which is a true statement that speaks to the current facts. [Laughter] Now, at the moment I uttered this answer I could tell there was immediate skepticism among the media and a real desire that I prove the truth right then and there of my brief assertion by making immediate, full disclosure. [Laughter] I did not show my briefs at that time out of an exaggerated and wholly inappropriate sense of my zone of personal privacy—[laughter] —which I drug up here with me from Arkansas. I want you to know tonight that I regret that deeply, and like my wonderful wife, I have been rezoned. Therefore, I must also acknowledge that for a short time during my youth, I did in fact also wear boxer shorts…

I thought Obama’s answer was about right. He seemed to preserve a little dignity while also appearing to be a good sport. But Carol Lloyd at Salon’s women’s blog Broadsheet was unamused:

Is this the Onion? Did he get strategy tips from 50 Cent? I can sympathize with Obama’s contradictory reply. On the one hand — it’s a clear slap-down of stupid, invasive questions. On the other hand, he doesn’t want to seem too uptight or humorless, so he adds a little flourish of braggadocio.

But where does that leave us? With images of banana hammocks and tighty whiteys dancing in our heads! Pondering the ins and outs of the potential president’s package!

And yet, no biggie — when it comes to sexuality, male candidates can have their cock and strut it, too. If an analogous question were posed to Hillary Clinton, there would no doubt be a different response.

Senator, we were wondering: Underwire or soft cup?

“I won’t deign to answer that, but you better believe they look good in whatever I choose.” It wouldn’t be a one-day news blip but a staggeringly strange faux pas.

Sorry, what? Does she really mean an answer like that would be considered a faux pas by Hillary or am I misreading? I was following her a bit, and she’s clearly right that a double standard exists here. It is largely true that male politicians are often considered sexy while female politicians are generally considered maternal, with some exceptions up here in Canada (though Michael Moore did often call Hillary Clinton “sexy” and confess to a “deep forbidden love” for her before he started saying voting for her would be immoral – see halfway through this story for example — and Jack Nicholson was recently distributing a very creepy video in which he says having to “salute her in the morning” would be the sexiest thing of all).

But if Hillary were asked to tell us whether she wore a thong or cotton granny panties (the actually analagous question), the weeks of staggering coverage we’d be subjected to would not focus on her answer. It would be outrage — likely at Broadsheet as much as anywhere else — that the political press would dare to cheapen Hillary’s historic run for the White House by treating her like a sex object because clearly the patriarchal society sees every woman as a potential Victoria’s Secret model and when the press encounters a strong woman they need to knock her down by reminding her that getting a peek up her skirt is all they really care about…

Wait, what was I talking about?

Oh, right. Boxers vs. briefs and the impending threat European underwear poses to manliness. What’s that all about? (Especially since the correct answer was revealed to us definitively by Mark Wahlberg in a series of tablets handed down from Calvin Klein in the early ’90s.) Even weirder since remarkably few men even buy their own underpants. Is there something about a man’s character housed revealed in his underwear?

Way back in 1998, Stanley Jenkins of Eclectica undertook to find out about the underwear-character question (and avoided buying some for himself) by, um, wearing the boxers of his dead grandfather:

I began to wonder what it would be like to wear a dead man’s underwear. I experimented.

All I can tell you from my experience is that the memory of a man is not altogether physical— it does not remain in his clothes, or at least, in the feel of them against the skin. Who my grandfather was, what he knew and what he had to tell me about family and the continuity of generations and identity, I suppose will have to be found forever elsewhere—if at all. In any case, it won’t come from anything as simple as wearing his plain, cotton drawers.

Strangely, I too inherited boxer shorts from my grandfather. And I too have found that they do not communicate anything of him to me. In fact, I still have a pair and I had forgotten they once belonged to him until I read Jenkins’ piece. Mostly I just know that I have to be pretty deep into the laundry cycle to get them out of the drawer, since my grandfather outweighed me by a few dozen pounds.

So unless some great new development emerges, I consider the matter of underwear as it relates to character to be probably irrelevant. You can’t argue with the field research. (But still, guys: boxer briefs.)

NEXT POST:

Blood on the Ice: When is a fight not a fight?

PREVIOUS POSTS:

Guys vs. Men: It ain’t (just) a battle of the sexes

I Come by it Honestly: Teenager fights bear. Wins.

Who da man? A brief and possibly irrelevant list of possible qualifications

Is This What You’ve Become? It all began in an east-end pigsty

More in Act Like A Man | Blogs Home | Current Issue | SUBSCRIBE »

Posted on Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 at 3:51 pm. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment, or trackback .