Sunday Newscape Magazine

Stylish men’s underwear. Those are not words I ever expected to include in a column. If you ask the men in my family, those are words that should be banned - on pain of a slow and torturous death - from being included in the same sentence.

See, I belong to a family of men suffering from a genetic mutation called the underwear overuse gene. Victims of this ailment believe that underwear never needs to be replaced. They’ll hang on to a pair of drawers until there’s nothing left but an elastic waistband and, possibly, one frayed leg hole surrounded by fragments of fabric. We have items in our house that can still be called underwear only in the theoretical sense that they once performed the traditional services of a pair of skivvies.

And yet, it almost takes an act of Congress - or my frequently delivered (but never carried out) threat to destroy our big-screen TV - to get my hole-y he-men to go to the store and buy new knickers.

Recently, I had to resort to throwing out all the threadbare boxers and briefs while my husband and son were out of the house. They then had the choice of either allowing me to buy for them (not a popular option since the time I came home with boxers covered with cute little palm trees), going shopping with me or going commando. That’s how we ended up in the men’s section of a nearby department store.

Getting my men to purchase, and then actually wear, new boxers or briefs has always been difficult. But nowadays, men’s undies have become a whole new fashion segment. They come in a variety of silhouettes and rises (low, mid, high), as well as in a cornucopia of fit options (relaxed or slim), colors and patterns. And forget about traditional cotton. Now there’s also Lycra, Spandex and various microfiber synthetics. It’s enough to make a man with the underwear overuse gene cling even more tightly to his decaying derriere covers.

And that’s exactly what my men tried to do.

“Whatever happened to good old-fashioned tighty-whities?” my husband moaned, holding up a pair of plaid briefs with buttons - buttons! - in the front. “This is an abomination! I can’t buy any of these.”

My son stared in horror at a package of underwear that claimed to “sculpt and support muscular movement.” Next to that was an entire display of enhanced undies promising to further flatter the male physique, including padded and “profile-enhancing” briefs. Sounds an awful lot like padded bras and girdles to me. I guess the men are just catching up.

“I’m not wearing any of these!” my son declared. “They’re trying to turn men into…into…women!”

Realizing I had a rebellion on my hands, I informed my skivvy-skittish spouse and son that we weren’t leaving the store without some kind of covering for their backsides.

In the end, we found a single bin - stuck way back in the corner of the underwear section - containing the kind of safe, staid Y-fronts that make my men comfortable.  Maybe, eventually, they’ll feel bold enough to explore all their underwear options. But I hope not.

© Jackie Papandrew, All Rights Reserved