Underwear

Male underwear is worn under clothes so as to protect the genitals from friction, or to provide support. While undershirts and long johns are also underwear, this article deals solely with below-the-waist underwear.

History

While loincloths have been worn since ancient times, underwear as we know it today has come into existence as a result of the invention of knitting machines around 1800.

According to Wikipedia, underwear first appeared in an advertisement in 1910. Boxer briefs, much easier to manufacture, are older than briefs. The jockstrap, which antedates the brief, first appeared in 1874 to provide support for riders of the newly-invented bicycle.

Until the 1970’s, almost all male underwear was utilitarian and white. Since the sexual revolution of the late twentieth century, male underwear became available in colors, then became inventive in styles and fabrics. Today (2015) there is much more variety in men's underwear than in women's.

Pictures of boys in underwear

Pictures of clothed boys are legal everywhere, although some jurisdictions would frown on pictures that focused preferentially on the genital area. Pictures of naked boys are of questionable legality, as the Azov Films Prosecutions show.

Pictures of boys in underwear are apparently legal in the U.S. At least, an underwear company, Tiger, openly posts its archive of catalogs showing boys in underwear in seductive poses, or boys with underwear peeking over their pants' waistbands. (See http://www.tigerunderwearstore.com/1TigerCatalogArchive.html.) The company on its Web site offers a slide show of their pictures of boys in underwear (http://www.tigerunderwearstore.com/1TigerBoysSlideShow.html).

Commerce in used underwear

A well-developed trade in used female underwear exists. In Japan there are stores ("burusera") that specialize in it; unsurprisingly, considering Japanese men's fascination with schoolgirls (Japan was the last country where child pornography was legal), the underwear of minor girls is preferred, although it has gone semi-underground since the government has tried to prohibit it. Used underwear was at one point sold in vending machines on subway platforms.

Clean used underwear is not what men want or buy. Because of its contact with the genitals, underwear picks up smells and stains, and this is what men want: the dirtier the underwear, the higher the price. Purchasers smell it while masturbating. Some men swap their wives' scented panties.

Although much less developed (the market is smaller), used men's underwear is also for sale. See http://www.usedmensboxers.com.

The sale of used children's underwear is legal, although clandestine, and allows the purchaser to do by proxy what cannot be done legally in person: smelling the child's smells. A news story reveals that a man was paying a mother $2000 a month for a supply of her daughter's underwear, and she introduced him to five other mothers doing the same.

Wearing panties

Panties (knickers in England) are by definition female underwear. However, men also wear them for fetishistic reasons, or sometimes for comfort. The practice is growing and becoming increasingly open and unashamed since 2000, at least in Western countries. Stores that sell women's underwear are increasingly comfortable with male patrons. While some women are uncomfortable with it, others think it's a hoot (fun), or sexually stimulating for them as well. While there is a well-developed community of male pantywearers (see http://www.hewearspanties.net), and occasionally there will be a picture of a leatherman with panties, as something super-kinky, the gay male community remains in general still devoted to the hypermasculine. Many more straight men than gay men wear panties.

Boys have started wearing panties too. In some cases these are gender-variant boys, who feel somewhat, or completely, feminine, and wear dresses and other female clothing as often and as publicly as they can. Other boys wear panties for the same reasons men do: they've seen pictures of men in panties on the Internet (usually masturbating) and find it a "hot", sexy thing to do. Some parents are comfortable with it - the dad may wear them too.