For the Love of What Lies Beneath: the Underwear Fetish Revealed

April 11, 2024
HANK ORSO

Boxers, briefs, low-rise, French Cut, jockstraps, sheer, tightie-whities...underwear. Most of us wear some semblance of this article of clothing most of the time. It's generally out of sight and out of mind. Unless you're like millions of gay men who have raised this piece of cloth to fetish status, then you might be thinking about them all the time! How do they feel against my skin? Why do they make my blood race? Why do I get a sexual flash when I see a man's underwear peaking out of the back of his pants or rising up on his hip? And dear lord, don't even get me started on what's on clear display in the locker room!

For absolutely no particular reason than that it was a day ending in "Y" yer boy Hank here was thinking about guys in their drawers and wondered where the fetishization of this seemingly innocuous element of dress comes from. I'm going to tell you right out at the beginning...I have no right answer, but my friends on FaceBook and across the internet shared their personal stories and some interesting ideas.

If you want to delve really deeply into the history of underwear culture and advertising going back decades, check out the incisive article "Men In Briefs" over at The Gay & Lesbian Review by Daniel Hill, which is an excerpt from his book History of Men's Underwear and Swimwear. But for now, we're going to keep things less academic.

As Alexander Cheves pointed out in The Advocate a few years back, "Used underwear is such a common fetish item that big-name escorts, porn stars, and prominent sex figures can usually make a good buck selling their unwashed undies." I'd venture to guess that such a business venture isn't relegated to porn stores, so start marketing yourselves, fellas! A quick Google search of "gay underwear fetish" results in either guys asking others if they have one or are they the only one (yeah, right!) or more likely a plethora of sites that sell different types of underwear and jocks marketed specifically to gay men. Dark Room Collection and Jock Box and such sites know their niche base and are making bank off of it! So if you feel a certain way about it and have the money to spend, the internet has you covered.

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But where does it start? Facebook has a whole bunch of underwear aficionados' pages to follow but I went right to some personal sources. Many of them relate stories that stem from when they were youngsters, seeing older boys or men in public areas at around the same time that their budding sexuality was coming into bloom, so a connection between the two events, dudes in drawers and "Hey, I might be gay!" just kinda stuck together.

In a Redditt comment, ForSureYo wrote "My best guess is it has something to do with the age of realizing I was gay and suppressing it. When I was (young), I remember changing with my friends and my friends who wore briefs and something about the intimacy of briefs (boxers are not the same) and seeing skin and absolutely refusing to accept that I liked what I saw in the way I liked it has permanently engrained a fetish in my brain." Likewise, "Michael" on FB shared "When I was younger I saw my dad and other guys he worked with in their locker room at work and that was kinda my first time seeing adult male bodies. Idk if it 'turned me on' at the time, I was young, but that image stayed with me. That then turned into getting turned on in the underwear aisle at Target and such, but also like not super turned on because the models were never the kind of guys I like (very hairy, average to chubby, thick, solid guys). But a thick, hairy guy in briefs, especially with a big bulge, will always drive me nuts in the best way."

I gotta admit, I am not mad at the amount of times the Bear Skn Underwear company ads show up on my feed!

Photo courtesy of Raging Stallion.

ChefOrSins over on Reddit also attributed it to a special feeling from the past: "You know how, when you were (young), and you woke up on Christmas morning and saw all of the pretty wrapped presents under the tree? The wonder and excitement of what might be hidden under that bright, glittering, shiny wrapping? I kind of think of a man's underwear the very same way."

Personally, while I don't have an underwear fetish, per se, I do love the look of a man's bulges and curves pressing against a plain pair of cotton briefs or boxers or a snug jockstrap. It probably goes back to my younger days in New Orleans where men got busy out in the open in the bars, and since they couldn't completely disrobe, they always had some clothing on, jeans and drawers pushed to the floor, or their manhood proudly hanging out of their button fly, over the cloth. As the Redditor said above, the anticipation of what lies beneath adds to the excitement, so the covering becomes part of the gift.

Not sure if you have an underwear fetish? The Advocate is here to help with "102 Photos to Trigger Your Underwear Fetish." And take a deep dive with the following YouTube episode of I. Que Grande's "Demystifying Gay Porn" podcast.