Hello Kinksters,

How have you been these past couple weeks? I am quite exhausted this week. Not only am I working the youth summer camp at the circus school during the day. I somehow agreed to sub a coworker’s week of adult night classes as well. The upside is that I’m ready to go on my gaycation next week (fabulous gay resort for all of next week in Florida). This week’s Fetish Friday is a concept post, about a trend I see pop up here and there. I have to credit BeauBriefs for posting a pic on twitter (@underloverwear) of his new JackAdams Jockstrap that has a window just above his penis. I have a few pairs of undies with a window there too, so I started thinking about the art of the male décolletage.

Now, traditionally the term décolletage applies to the area of a woman’s chest above her breasts to her neck. Most often used to talk about necklines of dresses that enhance or showcase that part of a woman’s body. For this post, I would like to broaden that term. Transform the term’s meaning into any fashion that highlights the area leading up to an area of heightened arousal.

Now, you aren’t ever EVER gonna find me telling people what I want them to do with their pubic hair. But I am gonna share that in my opinion, the hottest “style” for any of these looks is slightly trimmed to moderately trimmed. I don’t find the baby-shaved look that appealing. I think the full bush might detract from the window concept a little.

The brand BeauBriefs was rocking on his twitter is the Punter Body Flex Jockstrap from Jack Adams USA. I think that’s next on my purchase list (thanks Beau for the inspiration).

BodyAware makes a pretty fun Neon Cabana Tanga with the window too. It comes in Neon Orange, Neon Green and Neon Yellow.

I would love readers to suggest their favorite male décolletage pairs that I haven’t mentioned. Let’s see how many we can find. What are your feelings on this? Décolletage: love it or leave it?

Until next time my sexy friends,

Keep it kinky!

TtheAmazing, over and out.

In our reader survey we asked you guys who influences your buying decisions. It’s not like you can walk in any department store and buy what you want, when you want it. Many brands are only available through the net. Then there is the whole double standard (which I have tried to write about 3 times today and just gave up. It’s a complicated issue). After 5 paragraphs in I asked, Is this topic important to say or am I preaching to the choir. I chose the later.

Emails from brands

This one was a shock for me. Not that it’s an influencer but it’s number one. There is a combination of why this makes sense. The first is they announce when new pairs are released. You will be given a link and be able to buy right then. Sometimes we get advance notice and publish it before it’s available to buy. Next, brands and retailers send out emails about sales. If it’s a good sale, you guys will definitely shop!

Reviews

This one made us at UNB very happy. We love sharing our opinions on the brands we review. Sometimes they are good and other times they are bad. Reviews allow you to hear how someone liked the pair. What are the great points and the parts we fell need some work. This is one area where if you have further questions we didn’t cover, contact us and we will answer them for you. It may help us refine our review process.

Social Media influencers

I figured this would be the top influencer of you guys. Social media influencers are more than just guys posting pictures in underwear. You guys mentioned other underwear blogs like The Bottom Drawer and Men’s Underwear Blog. Real guys on social media like Underweardude, Bikinisnthongs and BiThongdude. Celebrities such as Seth Fornea and Colby Melvin. And lastly brands such as Nasty Pig, International Jock and  Dead Good Undies. Twitter wasn’t the only social media sites you guys use. Other sites were Instagram and Tumblr.

News Write Ups

News write ups are posts on our blog and others informing you on what new pairs are released. Not everyone wants to sign up brand’s email list. We try to keep you informed as much as we can. Even introduce you to new and up and coming brands. We have included new posts to profile pairs. Post such as Jockstrap Wednesday, Thong Thursday, Swimwear Sunday and Undie Monday. We do this because we think deserve more attention. It’s not easy to keep up with all the pairs released. But we do our best to cover things we think are fun and awesome.

Partner/significant other

As much as we say we pick our own undies. Our partners/significant others play a big part in what we buy. That is if you have one! You will buy things that they will like to see you wearing. Some guys get their partners involved in the purchase. Our very own Salvatore usually gets his wife to pick out a lot of his review pairs he receives from us. I’m sure more husbands and wives do this for their partner. They may have veto power or not. When I last dated my partner at the time hated one pair that I loved. I bought it anyway.

Friends

Lastly, friends influence you. This could be real life friends or social media friends. Some of us have friends we can talk underwear with at times. We can talk about new brands and what we love. Others don’t have that in their lives. Enter the world of Twitter where you can create a pseudonym and talk to like-minded guys. In a judgement free zone. It doesn’t matter if you’re gay/bi/straight. We are all brothers in underwear.

My personal influencers are: Social Media, Brands and friends. I have made a lot of friends through the blog and many will email me when they find a new brand. Also, I’ll see new lines and brands online. We don’t always get notified when there are new lines out. Some brand produces new pairs every two weeks. Lastly, are brands. Much like you guys I do subscribe to email lists and get to see when things are released.

These are just a few of the top influencers you guys pointed out to us. It gives us some great insight into what motivates you guys! I hope you enjoy these posts. You guys are the most amazing guys!

We know we have a lot of fans out there. On our social media accounts we get some great feed back from you guys. It’s not always how great we are, but things we are doing wrong too. That’s one thing I love about you guys. Many of you aren’t afraid to call us out when we aren’t doing something right. To do a blog you have to listen tot he good and bad. Sometimes the bad is not easy to hear but it makes you better in the long run.

Recently, we conducted our Annual Reader Survey. This past month we did a similar post to brands. It gave us just as much insight as our readers have done. We discovered that the two overlap a lot more than we would have thought. We will continue to do this to keep improving the site and work on meeting your, the readers,  expectations and also brand expectations.

The brand survey reinforced that the Patreon was the right choice. It takes money to put on a blog the size of UNB. Plus we have plans for the future and need your help to accomplish them! The costs to run the site aren’t sexy. Such as hosting, email, postage and such. Then there are shoots we want to do for you guys. You mentioned in the survey you want to see real guys in pictures and shoots. Also you want to see up and coming models. These will be shoots we will have to pay for ourselves.

What can you do to help? We have a sizable reader base and if just 1/4 of you donated just $1 a month it would be an amazing help. If you wanted to donate more we wouldn’t turn it down! It could help us improve the content of the blog and expand to more areas you guys are interested in us covering.

What would your monthly donation do and what are our needs:

• Help cover the costs of running the blog, specifically hosting the site monthly
• Improve writing – I know, sometimes we don’t write so good (sorry had too). While we have improved I would like to get a Grammerly to double check our writing. Being dyslexic sometimes I miss things.
• Do more shoots through out the year showing up and coming models. Also finally do that real guy shoot
• Buy underwear/gear we can’t get to do reviews. We have great relationships with brands but there are some we don’t. We want to do reviews on these pairs.

There are many more areas. If you donate you will become part of the UNB Team. Its simple to do. Just go to the UNB Patreon site and set up a monthly donation. We love our Patreons and readers. Let’s get UNB to that next level.

Color is in the top 5 things you guys look for in underwear. This year we wanted to know what colors you guys love. This was an open ended question that you guys could put in any color or colors you loved. You guys responded with 330 different colors you loved. Some said a few colors and others listed just one. As you can tell there is a lot of over lapping colors. Here are the top 11 colors (we were going to do just 10 but we had a tie)

Again, bar graphs are super sexy. I wanted to make every color what color it was but Excel wasn’t playing nice. The top color that most guys liked, almost a fourth of you guys said blue. This was no surprise to me. Blue is one of the most popular colors in the general pubic. So it makes sense you guys would love blue undies.

The second place was a surprise to me. You guys love black undies. I was expecting to see a few more options before we got to black, but it is a classic and can be very sexy. Third place went to Red. Again no real surprise to me. Red has always been the top color for many guys. I will admit I love a bright red brief.

The fourth place is a big shock to me. You guys picked white. I was not expecting white to make the top 10 with our readers. Many guys have said that white is boring. But it seems many of you see red as a classic and a color to embrace. It just an interesting pick you guys revealed.

My favorite color comes in in our fifth spot. Green! I love green and want more companies to make pairs featuring it. We go through phases of green being in and out. Next is pink! We recently did a non scientific poll on Twitter and asked you guys if you would rock a pair of pink undies. We had about 97% of you who answered said yes. Pink is no longer considered feminine. It also has been popular for a few years and doesn’t seem to go out of style.

When you think of underwear do you think of Grey? It’s not one of the top colors that come to mind for me. I would have never have guessed it would be in our top 11. It shows me something new about our readers! You guys like the classics of black, white and grey.

The next two colors can be on the bright end. They are purple and orange. I figured Purple would be higher on the list. It’s one of the colors in the last few years that has picked up popularity. Orange is one of those colors that is always in the periphery. It never really goes away but never has been the “it” color.

The two tied in last are Bright colors and Prints/Patterns. Bright colors are really primary colors. Ones that are fun and the blue, red, yellow and etc. Some guys bunched them into one. The last I was glad to see. Prints have been huge the last year in men’s underwear. More guys are branching out to try them and actively looking for them. We expect this to grow over the next year.

These are the colors you guys loved. But that’s not all of them. Below are all the answers we received. What is your favorite color?

We all love underwear! We have a our favorite styles, colors and brands. However, there are things we really don’t like in underwear. You guys have very specific things you hate. Many of you aren’t afraid to share it in our survey. This year we had some new things get reported and other things were similar to last year. One big difference from last year, is you guys really voiced yourselves very well. Many of you were very specific about what things you don’t like. Fell free when we do a survey to tell us exactly what annoys you.

Let’s Look at the overall list. This was a question without any prefilled answers. This all came from you guys. There were some similarities that most guys shared and some very specific ones we have never had before. Here is the broad view of the data:

Aren’t bar graphs sexy? I’m a little rusty with Excel and had to wrestle with it to give me this graph!

Most Annoying Factors:

Sizing

• Sizing is the biggest issue you guys have by far. It mainly centered around no universal sizing charts for brands. How things differ from brand to brand and country to country. You guys want better sizing across the board. This is a big ask and I’m afraid to say that it won’t be changing anytime soon.

Pouch Issues

• You maybe thinking this is about guys well endowed. We did have some guys complain about that, but for the most part it was guys wanting a supportive pouch. Regardless of endowment, a good and defined pouch is top of the list. Most reported they hate when a pouch looses its shape as well.

Construction Issues

• This one had several issues. The two things that stuck out the most were seams and leg openings. You guys hate seams that are sewn bad. Ones that are itchy and are abrasive. The other issue are leg openings. Specifically ones that are tight and restricting. This included briefs and boxer briefs.

Support and Comfort

• This is a given I think in great underwear. Many mentioned underwear that looses its shape when wearing it. You guys want underwear that fits well and holds up to your day. Regardless of if you are at home, work or at the gym. Personally, I think this has a lot to do with construction, fabric and design.

Tags/Labels

• This is one of my big ones. It made our list again this year. Nothing can ruin a pair of underwear more than a bad tag. I have had ones that fit amazing and then a tag that is itchy or scratchy, just ruins it. A few of you guys mentioned this alone. Several just put “tags.”

You guys told us some new things this year that haven’t been on our list last year. While not in the top 5, we wanted to showcase some of these that are new!

Butt Issues

• Ok, I didn’t know what else to call it. But this year we saw a growth in guys who hate underwear that rides up when they have junk in the trunk. This was number 7 on our list. Guys with fuller backsides face different issues than those who don’t.

Society Issues

• This year you guys pointed out how guys should be able to buy underwear in mainstream stores. You guys want to be able to go out and buy what you want where you want. Without any judgement or being called “gay.” Women can buy anything at Victoria’s Secret, and you guys want that freedom.

Store Selections

• This mirrors above to some extent. You guys mentioned that many stores have a lack luster selection of underwear. We aren’t talking underwear stores but big department stores. They just carry a few brands. Also included are styles as well. A few pointed out that stores don’t sell thongs for men. I wasn’t expecting this in the survey but great to see!

Partner Issues

• This showing 1 person pointed this out but I think there were two. This basically is having a supportive partner who appreciates your love of underwear. Someone you can share it with. This spans both gay and straight guys. We have heard it the last few years on both sides. Although, I think more has to be done on the straight side. We all want a supportive partner in things we like!

These are the things you guys have issues with undies. It’s great to find out what you guys like and don’t like. We hope to share some of this info with brands so they can use the feedback in underwear designing for the future.