“Cock-a-doodle-doo”
It’s hard to say where I picked up the line “no one goes through the gate anymore; they just hop over the fence.” I attribute it to Seinfeld. But I’ve only watched two episodes of Seinfeld and I’ve never watched his standup. Google offers no evidence that anyone has ever said it. And since Google is my only resource to find authoritative advice, we’re taking it on faith that I didn’t just make it up. Regardless, it’s an awesome metaphor and it still captures a sentiment that I try to express to men as I help them select a new pair of underwear. Flies: the slit on men’s undergarments, dug into to pull a penis through and pee, are a thing of the past. And I defer to Seinfeld as the source of sage advice because people don’t trust me when I tell them that “eighty percent of men no longer use their fly.” I don’t always trust myself saying that either, it’s another canned one-liner that I’ve picked up and long since forgotten from where. That one, I’m pretty sure my boss told me. He probably yanked it out of trade magazine and is now misquoting it. And like a game of telephone, the source material has become muddled and unverifiable.
I work at a men’s underwear store, UnderU4Men and I’ve collected these sound bites and clips of artificial wisdom to be an effective sales person. I have a reputation to maintain and sales goals to keep. On any given day there’s almost always an older, modest man and his doting, cute, petite wife that come into the store. The store is marketed towards a “main street” customer; the target-demographic are those who spend the majority of money in retail: females. Like so many women who have spent the majority of their adult lives buying themselves bras and panties at stores not unlike this one, the woman who’s just walked in is elated to be here. This man is not. My job is to bridge the gap between their disparate attitudes in the hopes that, through conversation, the wife’s excitement can meet the husband’s apprehension in the middle. The hope is that both parties can find a pair—or several pairs—of underwear that makes them both happy. Some couples are more willing to compromise; some husbands are happy to submit to the wife’s choices. Some men come into the store with a girthy list of specifications, based upon a pair of underwear they bought at Nordstrom Rack a decade ago that has become the paragon of men’s undergarments in their mind: they have to be unbranded, black, cotton, with no elastic, a wrapped waistband—not too thick—but also not too thin, with a fly and a low-rise on the waist. They’ll settle for no less, even if it means they’ll never find another pair of underwear to wear ever again.
Sometimes, these same men can’t be bothered to shop for themselves, so they send their partners into the store with this impossible list of demands. And I am stuck fighting the demands of a straw man who can’t even be here to make these requests on their own. But sometimes, they are both here—like the couples mentioned earlier. We talk about what the guy likes; boxers, briefs, boxer-briefs, trunks: how substantial the underwear’s coverage should be, how tight it fits, how long the legs are, if there’s any leg at all. I usually don’t mention jock straps or thongs but those are options too! Then there’s fabric: do they want to stick to cotton? There’s 100% cotton, there’s cotton/spandex blends, nylon/spandex blends, polyester/spandex blends. There’s the “natural fabrics”: merino wool, modal—made from beech wood trees, tencel—made from eucalyptus, bamboo—made from bamboo (no joke). All are splinter free! Or your money back.
All this is to say that we get to talking about a lot before we start to talk about anything specific. But inevitably, there’s a man that’s been shown a few of my personal recommendations and starts to realize that most of the underwear—regardless of the size fit and fabric— doesn’t have a fly. And panic sets in. “Where’s the pee hole?” “Where’s the slit thing?” “How am I supposed to piss while wearing this underwear?” There are many, many things that I’m willing to answer but for these questions, but I let Seinfeld respond for me, to keep things light-hearted. But most of the time, their reaction, still looks a lot like this: “So I just pull my pants and underwear down and show the entire restroom my ass?” Internally, my response is “sure, that’s one way to do it. I mean, I do it differently. I myself, jump over the fence without mooning anyone in the process. Just breathe, sir; I was able to figure it all out without hyperventilating and having an aneurysm ” “The missing fly won’t accidentally invite some scandalous gay cruiser to motorboat your exposed buttocks.” But I have to say all that more gently. Something like: “well you just pull down the front of the underwear and still use the fly on your jeans. You don’t have to pull your pants down”. I can’t help whatever latent sarcasm my voice carries as I speak in these moments. It seems unreal that this is such a foreign concept to some men. But then again, I’ve never really used the fly, it’s a complicated apparatus. I try to be understanding.
Since a long, long time ago, people have worn underwear. Men’s wear and what is fashionable has changed dramatically and differed radically within cultures, social standing and a lot more. However, throughout all of this, underwear seems a relative—but not universal—constant. Most dudes have worn underwear, smallclothes, loincloths or grape leaves, Matthew McConaughey and a few other commandoes excluded. But Digging up where the fly came from is a tricky bit of archeology and I think it would have diminishing returns. At the end of the day, what are you left with? Knowledge that flies were put into underwear after some Victorian had too much trouble with his codpiece? It would be a fun, grotesque bit of trivia to know, sure—even if it were actually true. But would finding that out make you feel more enlightened—or like a more interesting cocktail party guest? Maybe; but I make my living selling man-panties and tracing the fly’s inception sounds like a total bore to me. Because we kind of already know why they’re there: they make sense. They may not be a necessity for everyone but they’re useful. It’s this sensefulness and utility that I find most intriguing anyway.
Flies are nothing, if not utilitarian. They’re used to pee out of. They serve no other purpose. Well, there was the one German woman who asked me, worriedly and in broken English, where the hole for sex was. So, clearly there are creative ways to use a fly, as her and her husband discovered. “How is the cow supposed to get out of the barn without a door?” she probed. I think she meant “how does the cock get out of the roost?” But farm metaphors can be confusing in your second language. But let’s chew that cud for a moment: “how does the cow get out of the barn?” Not as easily as you’d think, even with a door.
A standard fly is anything but standard. They are all a vertical slit cut into the crotch of underwear but their similarities end there. On boxers, they are straight-forward: the slit is overlapped slightly by downy fabric on each end of the opening and usually has a little button in the middle, for closure—Georgia O’Keeffe, eat your heart out! But boxer-briefs, trunks and briefs have a more nuanced take on what a fly should be. Some have the button-enclosure, like boxers but many have a labyrinthine jumble of openings and layers of fabric to navigate. Sometimes, to remind myself why I don’t use flies, I try to use a fly. I waste seconds of my life digging at my crotch, trying to traverse the messy folds that house my penis. It’s frustrating! I was never taught how to use one but even if I had been, no two fly-mazes are made the same. Some only require a reach into-the-front and around-the-bend. Others require a reach into-the-front down-to-the-bottom and a pull-down-and-back up. Sometimes, the snake has a lot of grass to slither through. I feel inclined to give any man who routinely does these dick gymnastics a gold medal.
There are other options to aid in piloting the jet stream. One, more sensible option is the Swedish Fly; it’s cut into underwear horizontally, instead of vertically. It was Swedish military-issue in all underwear produced during WW1. Just a reach-down and a pull-out—like all Scandinavian ingenuity: it’s simple and requires no instructions. But it’s never really caught on; it’s never been typical. It’s a novelty. Why? My theory is kind of graphic but you’ve made it this far, so it’s safe to say you aren’t squeamish. When a man gets excited and his penis becomes erect, it doesn’t have a lot of places to go; an easily accessible opening provides the opportunity for some breathing room. There’s nowhere to go but up! It’s an armchair hypothesis, to be sure; but nonetheless, a compelling one.
So make no mistake, I understand why the fly exists. But it’s a bit of a non-issue for me. It’s there or it isn’t: I still manage to pee either way. No skin off of my dick. It creates as many problems as it solves. And as far as a time-saving device goes: it fails. I want to comfort those few men who place so much value and importance on an extra piece of fabric, with a small hole cut into it. This 20% of men, who still politely use the gate and don’t hurdle over the fence, aren’t always easy to console. I want to explain that it’s really, not the end of the world. But when a man reacts so defensively to something that is so trivial, my cogs start turning. There’s an instability that’s fostered by a lack of fly in men’s underwear. There’s an even bigger instability caused by what flies are replaced with: enhancing pouches.
“Men’s underwear has switched from a logic of use to a logic of size” laments a writer from New York magazine, in an conversation that Judith/Jack Halberstam anecdotally refers to in one of her/his lectures. It’s just one of many points that Halberstam employs to illustrate the shifting trends and mores in men’s wear, men’s culture and the very concept of “Men.” As someone who’s fascinated by gender, gender roles and gender fluidity, I’m inclined to agree. The enhancing pouch ushers in a brave new world for men’s underwear. What does a “logic of size” provide in men’s underwear? It tinkers and screws with the idea of purposefulness in underwear. The purpose of underwear is now more complicated. It’s not only a buffer placed between your groin and pants but also, something to be desirable in; now it’s something to show off.
Male anxiety is as tricky as any anxiety of privilege can be. Men’s desirability has never been so phallic and penis-centric. Men’s desirability has traditionally been a displacement of the penis onto other things like fully-throttled cars; throbbing wads of cash; big, hard careers. Men’s ability to objectify, to collect objects, and surround themselves with objects dictated and enhanced their attractiveness. All of this says, “hey look at my large, aching, impressive endowment; I’m a person you desire.” Clearly, there are exceptions—no one disputes that. But it’s been compellingly argued by uncountable sources that male allure was shaped by almost everything but the penis and its size. A certain majority of men don’t mind talking about their assumedly large members, with boastful bravado. Other men remain more modest. However, make no mistake, penis size has been one facet of many in the calculus of male desirability. It’s just never been so explicit and pronounced as it is today with the enhancing pouch.
To clarify, not all pouches on men’s underwear today are “enhancing” in such obvious ways. Some are designed for comfort, some are designed for support, some are for sports-performance. By-and-large, if there’s a pouch, there’s not a fly. So it’s a muddled dichotomy but a dichotomy nonetheless. But a pouch is a pouch and regardless of function, they do set out and package the male genitals in very overt ways. Some just say “pouch front underwear” on their boxes. Others have more ostentatious names like “Trophy Shelf,” “Trophy Boy,” “Almost Naked,” “WonderJock,” “Show-It Technology,” “Saxx,” “Shock Jock” and the list goes on. The “Almost Naked” is the highest selling pair of underwear in our company, the bamboo soft fabric is one selling point but the hang-free pouch is another. “It’s supposed to feel like you’re not wearing anything” I tell customers, as if they couldn’t figure that out on their own.
That idea that it feels like it’s not there is appealing to men. They want to feel free and unbridled; to let it all hang out. They also might not want to think about what underwear they’re wearing throughout the day. Comfort is still king in men’s wear. But the “Almost Naked” also foregrounds the penis; it’s front-and-center in the apparatus. I think it looks unflattering; all the schlongs that I’ve seen in this pouch have looked somewhat like a cross between a fruit basket and a bird’s beak, regardless of how big the banana is. But I also can’t argue with the success of a pair of underpants that outsells anything else in the store three-to-one. I tell people that “it’s something to look at once it’s in there.” So, I’m not lying.
Other pouches just bring it all to the front but don’t make such a spectacle of it. I prefer these the most. I feel sexy in them, I feel desirable. I also feel comfortable. They enhance without being obscene or vulgar about it. I have my own reservations about making such a phallocentric declaration. I’m as susceptible as any other man to the anxiety of desirability. Making the penis a pronounced object of desire, subordinate to the logic of size, fosters a lot of insecurity. And insecurity shatters the confidence that has formulated male sexuality for a long time. Women are used to push-up bras, make-up, manicured body hair, things used to enhance the sex-appeal of their bodies for men. If all are subject to the gaze and the gaze is male, how do men feel when their penis is so naked and exposed to it? The penis becomes an object desired by other men. Not only the phallus, an abstraction buttressed by wealth and objects, but the penis itself. Men form their aspiration to be better, more desirable men through the size of one another’s penis in this new world of underwear. And it’s kind of queer, even if they’re wearing the underwear for women. And that’s why I think that The NY Magazine Reporters observation—that there’s a change from a “logic of use to a logic of size”—is so compelling. It’s a fundamental shift in masculinity and a shifting of the male gaze. Underwear is devoid of the comforting, supple folds of the fly and replaced with pouches that broadcast their penis size. With this, come new ideas of what is sexy and how to make a man wanted by others.
Some men—like the occasional customer I talk to—are angry, defensive, seething and scared. Some, like the reporter Halberstam talks to, are simply confused. Men now navigate a world which seems outwardly codified and purposeful; a world that was once somewhat easier to navigate and exist within as a male-bodied man. But it’s getting more complicated; maybe a lot less complicated. Maybe it’s just foreign, unusual, and slightly queerer. The reporter’s sentiment isn’t fear or annoyance or retaliation. Like him, most men today approach it quizzically and perplexedly. But some don’t, some get upset and defensive. Some cling onto every last scrap of fabric that their disintegrating security blanket of masculinity has—including the fly.
iwearsweaters 