We hope you enjoyed part 1 of the Straight Talk. Here is part 2

The Bottom Drawer: It looks like all of us but Steve discovered our skimpier styles more or less on our own originally. His discovery of the skimpy styles started as a joke with a thong purchased for him. It seems to me the so called “man thong” is typically perceived as a joke in society even the bikini could be grouped in there. You see lots of pranks, jokes, and lost bets related to them. Any thoughts on why? And how about ideas on how we can turn the tides?

Underweardude: The bikini is definitely grouped in with the thong. The only time i’ve ever seen it reffered to in pop culture is negatively, often leopard print and worn by a “player”. The most notable instance to me in my mind is how the wearing of such a pair is used to ridicule occasionally the character Quagmire on the tv show Family Guy. I think too many people are caught up on the inherit sexuality of skimpier pairs, believing them to only be fit for male strippers. I also think it has to do with how men and women are portrayed in modern culture. How is it I can go to practically any clothing store in the city and find women’s thongs hanging on racks out in the open for all to see, but not a single guy’s thong?

How to solve it? I’m not really sure. End the stigma, get women interested in seeing men in them, promote them as begin masculine, etc, etc. I’d still say that getting women interested in them. If women are interested in seeing guys in thongs, that will help make them become more accepted.

Steve: I agree 110%!!  Thongs, bikinis, etc have such a stigma to them.  Men think that only gay men wear them.  They also think that women won’t like them.  Well if that were true, there wouldn’t be so many companies making them now.

How do we change this?  I would say that we make it known in locker rooms, to friends, etc, but I am a hypocrite haha.  No one other than my wife knows what I am info.  A couple of my guy friends know I don’t wear boxers any longer…how can anyone anymore with the slim cut jeans now….but none of them know about my “skimpy” types.  Nor do they know that I have 150+ pairs.

This is the same as why guys don’t wear swim briefs.  Saying they are not socially acceptable.

Ron: Steve. Some good observations there. Thankfully I’ve always managed to repeal the boxers fad across here and men are mostly into the tight fitting trunks which is better.

I’m quite open at the gym about my bikini style underwear and have been introducing briefer swim bikinis and never had an issue with either so far. Though I guess being ‘older’ most guys of my age will remember wearing speedos and the younger guys will just dismiss me a silly ‘old’ guy in speedos!  I can’t quite compete with the number of skimpy bikinis you have though. My swim bikinis number around 10 I guess with a couple of things thrown in in addition but for underwear I guess I have about 20 or so and a smaller number of trunks to keep my wife happy; well since she wears tiny thongs and gs partly for me but also because she likes them!

Some women I know scorn at the idea that I wear speedos and a female friend of my sister even announced it publicly at a ‘party’ she was having in her house. Care I? Not at all. My sister also asks when we return from holiday’ was he(me) still wearing those speedos?’

The Bottom Drawer: It is very rare to see a guy portrayed in something other than boxers, boxer briefs, or briefs in pretty much any mass media that isn’t making a joke of it. I’ve seen a few places that I do not believe the bikini was portrayed as a joke for the most part, but there are a lot more instance out there where the thong and bikini are portrayed negatively for guys. Of course it gets the laughs that they were going for. I agree it has to come down to what is ingrained in our culture, which makes it a harder road to change people’s minds.

Definitely not something we can solve overnight. Steve, I agree we should wear and share them proudly, but I’m with you and find it something that I cannot easily do in person. Hence why I blog about it instead. Yes Sam, getting the ladies to like guys to wear them would be a great thing, which is probably more in the court of the manufacturers and retailers to change up their advertising, which leads into the next question I have.

What changes would you like to see in men’s underwear advertising?

Underweardude: The changes depend on whether or not you mean mass market undie advertising, or specialty brand undie advertising.

Mass market: more types of pairs, etc.

Specialty: Perhaps marketed more like cigarettes, beer, food, and other stuff marketed to men. Show an attractive woman interested in a man holding/wearing your product, and men will buy it.

The Bottom Drawer: Both I guess would be good to cover. My mindset is more specialty, since that is my preference and would like to see them be mass marketed. I’m in agreement that a woman in ads would help the straight guy consider the underwear being advertised. Think it would help with the stigma that guys only wear the select few standard kinds that are mass marketed. A little off topic of men’s underwear, but related to advertising. I don’t know if any of you have seen some of the recent Victoria’s Secret catalogs, but they seemed like they were marketing more towards men. My wife commented on some of the shots being some thing for Playboy (The one she pointed out was a close up of a model’s butt in one of their cheekie panties). They had several full page photos of the models in more seductive poses. I don’t know if women are more open minded or can see themselves in those situation with their man or what. Probably not marketing that would work for men’s underwear.

Ron: For me it’s down to what happens on the catwalk. If designers and those who ‘police’ what the mass market wear were to suggest or start displaying skimpier underwear as the way ahead then their popularity would rise with exposure in the media. Famous faces modelling would also inspire a mindset change; if David Beckham or whoever wears skimpy underwear then their devotees would catch on and it would become fashionable. The fashion police keep telling us with a sneer that ‘budgie smugglers’ etc are wrong and for ridiculing so the proletariat out there follow suit. With the olympics rapidly approaching you can bet that in e diving pool the guys will be wearing relatively skimpy speedos and not  derogatory word will be said by commentators as the skimpy swimsuit is a tool of their trade. I still remember such sporting events of bygone days when men’s swimsuits were very brief to say the least. In the uk the joke underwear for men is the Y front brief which is usually associated with a much older generation but is the butt of jokes. It’s going to be long haul but we can be pioneers. If you can just get that confidence to strip off in the gym or wherever and reveal skimpy bikinis or thongs en it’s a start. I mean, there are so many web sites selling them that someone must be buying them and wearing them!
As regards Victoria’s Secret, I think our only uk store is at Heathrow airport in London however I’ve visited their stores in Houston and Lafayette while on business and found the sales girls extremely helpful. My wife certainly loves their thongs.

We got a group of four straight guys together for a talk about all things men’s underwear. They include some guys you know and some new ones. We asked Bottom Drawer to moderate this talk. He seemed the perfect guy for the job. Our very on Underwear Dude (he joined the talk before UNB, but he’s still our guy!), Steve (who has guest posted a few times on UNB) and Ron a new guy to the blog.

This is part one and we will run Part 2 tomorrow! Enjoy the conversation!

The Bottom Drawer: Why don’t we start off the conversation with how we got into underwear and preferred styles.

Personally, I was oblivious that men had more selection than boxer or brief until I received a catalog back in high school that showed a bunch of catalogs you could request. It was in there that I came across the Undergear catalog and discovered that there were sexier cuts of underwear for guys out there. I’ve always admired seeing women in their selection of bikinis and thongs and finding out that they were available for guys got me interested in wanting to give them a try. It wasn’t until I surprisingly came across some string bikinis for guys in a Kmart ad that I was able to get my hands on a pair to try and needless to say that day changed my choice in underwear. It was in college when I exclusively switched to wearing only bikinis and thongs and that holds true to this day.

Underweardude: Like Nate, I didn’t learn about the wide world of men’s underwear that existed until late high school. For much of my life I only knew of boxers, briefs, and later boxer-briefs. As I became interested in girls, I noticed the large difference in options mens had compared to women in underwear options. I was curious what else existed, and through Google, you might say, I discovered a whole new world.

Steve: It looks like we all have similar starts…I didn’t know about the options either growing up.  From when I was younger through Middle School I wore the white Hanes briefs my mother bought.  In High School it changed to boxers.  It wasn’t until after High School with my then girlfriend who liked to shop at Frederick’s of Hollywood.  She bought me a pair of smaller/crazy design boxers which then led into a conversation of other types of underwear that were out there.  A little research and It all exploded from that point forward.  It went from boxers only to boxer briefs, bikinis, thongs, etc.  After I left that girlfriend I was lucky enough to find another girlfriend who at first questioned my choices, but now she loves them all (except jocks) and she is now my wife.

Ron: Hello gentlemen, Delighted to be part of this discussion.

Firstly I live in the UK so my terminology may be different ; pants= underwear, shop = store. Also I’m probably a bit older than you guys; I was growing up in the 70s!

To begin, one of my first visions of very brief pants was on a Russian circus acrobat on a TVs show of the Russian state circus you could see his vpl and I wondered how I could get some of those skimpy pants. In the uk men traditionally wore Y fronts with a front opening  which you possibly know but one day I was visiting our local Marks and Spencer shop, very famous in the uk, which traditionally sold clothes for both sexes, and found they were selling very brief bikini style cotton pants with no front opening but a pouch for comfort. They looked smaller because of the type of elastic used so when they stretched out the fitted. I bought a couple of white ones and at the time was in boarding school for family reasons though my grandparents stayed nearby. My grandmother found one of them in the laundry and shrieked that they ‘wouldn’t fit over a baby’s bottom’ being so brief. We had a lovely lady who did cooking etc and she was more accepting of my choice telling my gran that it was now the fashion. I loved wearing them but was embarrassed anyone at school would find out because of the gay tag to skimpy pants. However I once went into the dorm of older guys and saw one guy laid out on his bed chatting to other guys and wearing only the exact similar pants!! M&S then started selling briefer bikinis though more synthetic and little support so I bought a couple but didn’t enjoy them as much as the first lot.

They progressed onto different patterns including leopard print which I bought but was caught out when I was doing my basic training at police college when one of the guys saw me wearing them when I got into bed and dragged me into the centre of the dorm to let the other guys see. After an initial ribbing nothing more was said. However I’ve been hooked on very brief underwear ever since my first exposure and now it’s easier to buy because of the Internet which does say with the stress of buying them in shops which I used to have though don’t bother now. While visiting buenos Aires Argentina some years ago I found a lingerie shop which was selling men’s thongs so with my basic Spanish plucked up the courage and went in to buy two. The lady was very nice and even laid them on the counter in front of other shop assistants for me to view.
However my current wife and the one before do/ did not like my skimpy pants preferring tight fitting trunks saying something about them accentuating the thighs more? Would have thought the bare thighs in skimpy pants or thongs would be better. My current wife hates thongs saying they are gay and for Peter stringfellow! That said she loves to wear the tiniest of thongs as pants and on the beach even wears tiny bikinis!
My current favourites are Hom and Kiniki micro briefs though I have a set of very brief string side pants I actually bought in a Walmart super market in Houston a couple of years ago when across on business.

Underweardude: So what approximately is everyones age? I think that might have an impact on in what way and time of our life we got into undies. For instance, i’m in my late 20s, and it would have been near improbable for me to get into undies where I live if not for all the underwear-selling websites that were around when I first started poking around online. The internet really was vital for me.

Also, what styles or pairs got you to switch to more unusual kinds of men’s underwear? I started with bikinis and eventually thongs, as at the time I was perfectly happy with the boxers I regularly wore(Horrifying, I know), and was looking for skimpy styles mainly. I wasn’t looking to modify my daily wear collection, and it took a few years for me to eventually do so. I’d wager that this is the opposite of how the average straight guy would get into undies, instead they are looking to go upscale on their current favorite style before branching out. What do you guys think?

The Bottom Drawer: I’m in my late 30s. The Internet definitely lead to me trying more styles particularly the thong, since they weren’t carried in stores. Though I did discover them at Target at one point in college. Other places I came across some sexier underwear before discovering them on the Internet were Kmart, Sears, Walmart, and Value City Department Stores. I haven’t purchased any from a store in person in years now. Like Ron said it is a lot easier and less stressful to order online than in personal. My heart always got pumping when I made an underwear purchase of bikinis or thongs at a local store. I’d say that is due to the stigma that bikinis and thongs are for females unless you are gay or a stripper. Though I really never noticed any strange looks from the sales clerk, but I typically made sure it was a women at the checkout I chose.

I started with the string bikinis and then into thongs. Always hated the restriction briefs had around my thighs, so the string bikini was an obvious solution to me. I don’t think most guys are looking to change their underwear selection unless they are not comfortable anymore or someone else buys them a different style to try. I’m not sure most guys know there are more than boxers, boxer briefs, or briefs out there or not. For example my father-in-law didn’t know briefs were available in colors other than white until this past year when my mother-in-law sent him to get some new underwear while she was looking elsewhere. My wife and mother-in-law got a good laugh out of that. He seemed to think underwear should be white. I know he is more the generation that does wear what was bought for him. He’d get a real shocker if he saw my underwear drawer.

Ron: You have probably guessed from my previous post that I’m in my mid 50s though keep myself in shape and my wife looks after me as regards eating healthily etc.

I’ve always had an eye out for skimpy undies ever since my young years in the uk the Sunday newspapers always ads for skimpy underwear and swimwear and I always wanted to send of for some. Like Nate the buying of skimpy undies or bikini swimwear was always a stressful time and I also used to wait until the female shop assistant was available as it always seemed more acceptable. Older women in particular are easy to buy from as they seem even more accepting I find. Less hang ups. There is a highland wear shop in my city which sells kilts and Scottish type items and I recall in the early eighties they sold extremely narrow nylon bikini underwear for men. I bought many though always waited until the sales floor was empty ; it was a small shop; before I selected the ones I wanted. The sales lady was much older and was always very relaxing obviously sensing my stress and occasionally took them out of their boxes and stretched them out on the counter for me to ensure they were the correct size. Insured to be terrified someone would come in but this never happened thankfully. I think she enjoyed teasing me! Shopping in the big stores was more difficult as I always scanned around the ensure there was no one I knew in the vicinity while I selected then purchased. The stress!!

Now I don’t care to be honest. If I ever happen to see any that I like in shops ill buy them without concern.

Underweardude: You guys are lucky, store wise. We had K-marts in my area(Not anymore), but I was never able to ascertain if they carried the skimpier Joe boxer styles. Barring the adult shops and the random XL Papi thong I found at a TJ Maxx-esque place once, the skimpiest kind of underwear available would be some barely-able-to-be-called-a-bikini-brief in Macys. One of the downsides about living in the South, I guess.

Steve: I’m in my early 30’s.  And the internet definitely helped me find more and more styles that were out there, but that was only after my ex-girlfriend at the time got me into it.

My everyday wear at first was boxers.  I was ok with it then as I was just out of High School.  She bought me the smaller/slimmer boxers and then she bought a thong as a “joke.”  It all snowballed from there.  It turned into a mix of boxers, briefs, boxer briefs, bikinis and thongs.  After a while the boxers disappeared more and more, followed by the disappearance of the boxer briefs.  Using the internet my collection grew skimpier and skimpier.  My ex-girlfriend and my wife are the only ones that are aware of what I wear now.

End Part One! Read more tomorrow