(No, I have no idea why these things pop up in my mind.)

From Wikipedia:

(#1) The houndstooth pattern

Houndstooth, hounds tooth check or hound’s tooth (and similar spellings), also known as dogstooth, dogtooth, dog’s tooth, or pied-de-poule, is a duotone textile pattern characterized by broken checks or abstract four-pointed shapes, often in black and white, although other colours are used.

A bit of history from the Wikipedia entry:

… Contemporary houndstooth checks may have originated as a pattern in woven tweed cloth from the Scottish Lowlands, but are now used in many other woven fabric aside from wool. The traditional houndstooth check is made with alternating bands of four dark and four light threads in both warp and weft/filling woven in a simple 2:2 twill, two over/two under the warp, advancing one thread each pass. In an early [use of] houndstooth, De Pinna, a New York City–based men’s and women’s high-end clothier …, included houndstooth checks along with gun club checks and Scotch plaids as part of its 1933 spring men’s suits collection. The actual term houndstooth for the pattern is not recorded before 1936.

A comparison of this pattern to others, from the A Tailored Suit site’s “Men’s Suits — Exploring Suit Fabric Patterns”:

(#2) Back when I wore serious men’s clothing, I was a herringbone tweed coat and paisley tie guy; but I admire the complex boldness of houndstooth

There are many wonderful color variants of the houndstooth pattern. Here, from the Brooks Brothers site, is a handsome Regent fit houndstooth sport coat in brown:

(#3)

 

(Fit young men wearing nothing but scraps of the American flag pattern, so not for those who are modest about displays of the male body or offended by casual disregard for the flag, but there’s nothing actually raunchy here.)

In the great avalanche of underwear ads that’s been rolling over my Facebook — wretched excess, even for someone with my tastes — there came, this morning, this arresting JockStraps.com ad offering a JOR US flag bikini jockstrap (which looks like a (mini-)brief from the front) — plus one of the model’s armpits):

(#

with his package
firmly and proudly
supported by the
Stars and Stripes, he

confidently enters the
carnal melee of the
Presidents Day
sexual marketplace

(You know how they get on the holidays. That’s February 15th this year.)

Another entrant, from ABC Underwear: the Neptio brand American flag jockstrap (in a more traditional style, with black waistband and straps):

(#2)

Other sources have American flag boxers, thongs, g-strings, swimsuits, shorts, and singlets. Everything for the patriotic and body-proud.

For instance, from my 5/30/17 posting “Flagging America”, this N2N US flag swimsuit (and another armpit):

(#3)

(This posting is about (real or fictive) sexual encounters between men, sometimes discussed in street language, so it’s not for kids or the sexually modest.)

The Daily Jocks ad from 2/15, under the header:

(#1) With the motor boat emoji (there’s a ferry emoji that might have done the job here, with a bad pun as a bonus)

The model, in what serves as nautical gear in the DJ world, with the accompanying DJ ad text:

(#2)

Unleash your nautical fantasy with 3 pieces that complete the new Code22 Naval Collection.

Horizontal stripes in white and navy blue are the basis of the brief, boxer and jockstrap made with high quality sports mesh.

[Two side notes. One, the heavy horizontal striping makes the model’s junk seem especially substantial and weighty, even though his cock is not visibly erect (as it often is in underwear ads aimed at gay men). Two, the model is displaying a carefully crafted body — and one that’s also carefully shaven, all over, for total smoothness (or, possibly, it’s been airbrushed away); one consequence of the very low body fat from that crafting is that the superficial veins of his forearms and belly stand out quite visibly, an appearance that is then not hidden by any body hair. I admit that when I see such prominent veins I worry that the model’s body fat is dangerously low. Can that be healthy?]

The portal to gay nautical fantasies is the catchphrase Hello, Sailor. From Wikipedia:

“Hello, sailor” is a sexual proposition made to a sailor, presumably by a prostitute or promiscuous woman supposing the sailor to be male and sexually frustrated after a long time at sea. [That is, sailors are taken to be intrinsically highly sexual beings.] This usage has become a camp catchphrase, implying that sailors stay away at sea so long that they cannot tell the difference between a woman and a man in drag, or a play on the common conception that many sailors are homosexual. Hello, Sailor in this usage is also the title of several books, including one by Eric Idle and another about gay life in the British merchant navy, as well as a 2007 Liverpool museum exhibit about gay sailors. The British comedy act Monty Python, which includes Eric Idle, also made use of the phrase in several of their sketches.

On the other side of the portal is a sea of nautical queerdom, cruising under the Hello, Sailor flag.

[The result of this history is that “Hello, sailor” is now associated with a sexually tinged greeting from one man to another: perhaps plainly the opening of an offer to engage in sex, now, with the addressee, in fact in hard-core sex (sodomy, anal intercourse, fucking) rather than more everyday sex (fellatio, cock-sucking), with the default understanding being that the man making the offer will be the receptive partner, and the sailor the insertive one. Short-cutting all the indirection that’s possible in this exchange, “Hello, sailor” canonically  conveys “Please fuck me”.

All of this is potentially variable, of course. The addressee need not be a sailor, but only a hot guy the speaker is playfully treating as one. The exchange might be only flirting, offering a compliment to the addressee (“You’re hot, buddy”). It might be exploring the possibility of a future sexual encounter, rather than something more urgent. The physical setting of the encounter, or the tastes of the participants, might mean that it’s cock-sucking rather than fucking that’s on the table. (Giving a sailor a quick blow job — no names, no affection, little foreplay, just  the blow job, man — in a dangerously semi-public place, in the near dark, is something of a gay cliché-tale.) And the sailor might be taking cock rather than giving it. Lots of real-life encounters are not the canonical ones.]

The t-shirts. A ton of tees, represented here by the two winners of a t-shirt contest on the 99designs site (which matches designers with clients who have ideas about designs they would like to have realized), on the theme Hello Sailor – Looking for Seamen, Searching for Love:

(#3)

(#4)

Yes, the seamen / semen pun is going to be unavoidable. Few can resist it. Even I riddle: Q: How are seamen like semen? A: They’re both salty.

Catch of the day in #4 is, however, a relatively fresh pun, taking advantage of an ambiguity in catch. From NOAD:

noun catch: … [b] an amount of fish caught: a record catch of 6.9 billion pounds of fish. [c] [in singular] informal a person considered attractive, successful, or prestigious and so desirable as a partner or spouse [or, to be frank about it, lover or trick]: I mistakenly thought he would be a good catch.

The crowd roared their hello-sailors as these hunks in their naval-pattern swimwear (cf. #2) sailed past in a Gay Pride Sitges parade (in The Gay Village on the seafront of Sitges, Spain (about 35 km / 22 mi southwest of Barcelona, in Catalonia), usually early in June):

(#5)

Said the soldier to the sailor. This Tom of Finland 1986 drawing (gouache on paper) seems to be untitled, but obviously it should have the soldier rasping throatily “Well, hello, sailor!”:

(#6) An encounter in the hypermasculine, sex-drenched world of Tom of Finland

Said the lad to the sailor. A hello-sailor welcome to the world of the artists Pierre & Gilles, sealed with a kiss:

(#7) Note la marinière, the cotton long-sleeved shirt with horizontal blue and white stripes; characteristically worn by seamen in the French Navy, it has become a common part of the stereotypical image of a French person (and recall the use of the naval stripes  in underwear, above)

Sailors are so central in the world of Pierre et Gilles that they assembled an entire book on a nautical theme, Pierre et Gilles: Sailors & Sea (2005). The beginning of the publisher’s lengthy, extravagant blurb (it sounds like something P&G wrote themselves, then had translated into English):

An unbridled celebration of a life beyond guilt and expiation [interpretation: they’re prepared to show pretty much anything about gay male sexuality, believing that casting it all as high camp removes the stain and sting of dirtiness]

As sweet as raspberry ripple, as tempting as popcorn. Welcome to the seductive pictures of Pierre et Gilles. Again and again they show people in kitschy scenarios against a background of flowers and hearts.

You might think that the campy world of P&G is far from the raw transgressive carnality of ToF (in Tom’s world, if the guys aren’t fucking in front of us, they’re probably thinking about it), but P&G collaborate with the outrageous fashion designer and fragrance purveyor Jean Paul Gaultier, who’s also sailor-obsessed — there are tons of sailors in his advertising — but enthusiastically embraces the association between sailors and sodomy.

Hello, sailor, you smell fantastic; fuck me. In my 9/7/20 posting “Le Male, the men’s fragrance” (which comes with an entirely relevant section on sailors and sodomy), this ad for the fragrance:

(#8) Le Male, the scent of a man, playfully presented as provoking sexual desire for the man who wears it; and note, again, la marinière, a regular feature of Gaultier’s advertising (some examples in my posting)

Two significant allusions in this ad (both entirely intentional, both employing campy puns): to James Montgomery Flagg’s 1917 poster recruiting soldiers for both World War I and World War II, with his Uncle Sam figure pointing his finger at the viewer and declaring “I Want YOU” or “Uncle Sam Wants YOU” (for military service); and to the Village People’s 1979 song “In the Navy”.

— wanting. The recruiting poster has the root sense of the verb want (which is available in a number of different argument structures), and JPG certainly wants you to buy his fragrance. But he also intends a different sense, from NOAD:

verb want: … [d] desire (someone) sexually: I’ve wanted you since the first moment I saw you.

Of course, we understand that the ad is probably not suggesting that Gaultier himself desires you sexually — maybe that the model in the ad does (in some fictive world in which the model is a character), but, much more likely, that any man  will desire you if you wear Le Male, you will be a fuckin’ sex magnet, you will become the intended recipient of this message:

(#9)

— in the Navy. Once you realize that the allusion is to the Village People song, you realize that the function of the Navy in it is to supply sailors for other men to have sex with, just as the function of the YMCA in “Y.M.C.A.” is to provide an easily available location for men to have sex with one another. The thing is that, although the Village People are a wildly camp act, the words of their songs steer clear of obvious double entendres — to such an extent that the songs have been considered as advertising tools for the Navy and the YMCA, respectively (a fact I continue to find astonishing).

From Wikipedia:

“In the Navy” is a song by the American disco group Village People. It was released [in 1979] as the first single from their fourth studio album Go West.

… After the enormous commercial success of their 1978 hit “Y.M.C.A.” which unexpectedly became the unofficial hymn and powerful advertising tool for the YMCA, the group took on another national institution, the United States Navy. The Navy contacted group manager Henri Belolo to use the song in a recruiting advertising campaign for television and radio. Belolo gave the rights for free on the condition that the Navy help them shoot the music video. Less than a month later, the Village group arrived at Naval Base San Diego where the Navy provided them with access to film on the deck of the berthed frigate USS Reasoner; in the end, the Navy did not use the video, choosing to remain with the traditional “Anchors Aweigh”.

Excerpts from the text:

Come on and join your fellow man
In the navy
Come on people and make a stand
In the navy, in the navy, in the navy, oh

They want you, they want you
They want you as a new recruit

If you like adventure, don’t you wait to enter
The recruiting office fast
Don’t you hesitate, there is no need to wait
They’re signing up new seamen fast

(even the seamen doesn’t sound out of place.)

Hello, sailor, in print. Over on the Goodreads site, a contributor has assembled a list of 116 items in the category “best gay romance featuring pirates, sailors or nautical themes” (romance in this context is understood very broadly; it looks like anything with sexual or affectional content counts as a romance). A few of the items seem to be sheer exercises in outrageous  language and action, not sustainable for any length (in fact, they all seem to be short Kindle books).

For example:

There’s Seamen on the Poop-Deck! (The Seamen Sexology #1) by François le Foutre (Kindle edition, 34 pp., published 5/19/15 by DaDo Publishing)

In Book 1 of The Seamen Sexology, Rear Admiral François le Foutre [Francis / Frank / Frenchy the Fuck] is come upon by his arch-nemesis and part-time lover, Captain Cocksmith Standish. Cocksmith and his men come all over the Raging Queen, take all of François’ seamen, and store them in the fo’c’sle with no hope of escape.

Don’t think I could manage 34 pages of this sort of thing. But to each their own tolerances.

(Hunky men performing suggestively in remarkable underwear, with a caption alluding to sex between men, so probably inadvisable for kids and the sexually modest.)

In an ad for a Daily Jocks late February sale, the model does a cock tease in his extraordinary golden shorts (DJX Liquid Shorts in gold, from the Circuit collection), with this ad copy:

Our ever popular Circuit Shorts, now available in metallic gold!

Stand out from the crowd in these unique liquid metal effect shorts, made from a premium foil-print fabric.

Featuring a secret pocket built into the waistband, perfect for storing your party essentials in. Also includes a drawcord at the waist for optimum fit. These shorts are designed to be form-fitting but still comfortable, with a light stretch in the fabric.

The ad’s image, with a caption of my own devising:

(#1)

Golden Boy does a cock tease

looking for a hot trick in his
golden Circuit Liquid Shorts,
GB pulled down a corner,
teasing his prey with a peek at the
black jock underneath, hinting at the
male gold waiting inside to be
handled and mouthed

From the DJX catalogue, a less lubricious display of the remarkable shorts, on an ordinary-guy model (displaying a notable moose-knuckle, however, and wearing a black harness, so it’s not your everyday presentation of self):

(#2)

(A right-at-the-line Daily Jocks ad today, with text that takes it over the line for kids and the sexually modest.)

The ad copy from Daily Jocks:

NEW DJX CIRCUIT
Step up your party look with the reimagined black circuit look.
Pair matching Jockstrap, Harness & Shorts.

(The name of the DJX Circuit Collection is a reference to gay circuit parties — on which, see below.)

The image is of Golden Boy (from a 2/27 posting) — hyper-masculine, with a hairy, sweaty, oiled, gold-toasted body — here with a hand in his jockstrap, and posed against a golden car.

My title for the composition:

Fired up for the grand finale,
Golden Boy jams a hand in his jockstrap

To which I’ve added a salacious caption:

(#1)

icon of the Gold Party in
Firetown Springs, GB
dances high and hard,
climaxes by
fucking his
Goldsmobile

GB’s previous appearance on this blog, in my 2/27/21 posting “Golden Boy does a cock tease”, with this image of him in his Liquid Shorts in gold:

(#2)

Allusions in the caption to #1: the name Firetown Springs is a mashup of the names of three gay holiday enclaves (Fire Island (NY), Provincetown (MA), and Palm Springs (CA)); Goldsmobile is a play on the automobile brand Oldsmobile (discontinued in 2004); high and hard is an allusion to drugs and sex at gay circuit parties; Gold Party is the name of an invented circuit party, on the model of the White Party (Palm Springs), the Black Party (NYC), the Red Party (Columbus OH), the Black & Blue Festival (Montreal), and the Purple Party (Dallas).

Circuit parties.From my 6/22/10 posting “Rivers of Babylon”:

[There have been] gay-themed “circuit parties” for over 25 years, [many] of them with color names.

… A circuit party is a one-day main event involving intense dancing for 24 hours, with accompanying sex, drinking, and (often) drugs, plus preceding events and following ones. Almost all of the participants (up to 20,000 of them at a really big party) are young gay men, many of them shirtless (or in underwear, or naked) most of the time.

More details in Wikipedia.

A hand in his jockstrap. In #1.  My 10/5/19 posting “A man, his hands, his pants” examines one hand (or sometimes two) in pants or underwear as a sexual gesture, often clearly fondling the man’s genitals (but on other occasions with non-sexual aims).

(Guys in nothing but their underwear, references to their bodies in plain terms, visually close to the line — so not to everyone’s taste.)

The story begins on 3/16 with a Daily Jocks mailing about a PUMP! sale, featuring the model I’ve called Aradesque.

Aradesque I. In PUMP! aqua briefs:

(#1)

Aradesque’s presentation of self is far to the queer end on the queer-straight scale, but (within the queer domain) also far to the butch end of the fem-butch scale.

Meanwhile, he’s performing a dick-framing gesture with his left hand, outlining a highly visible (though covered) half-hard penis — well short of a crotch grab, but similar in spirit to that gesture. In any case, it’s a homoerotically charged pose; he could just have rested his left hand lightly on his thigh, as he’s doing with his right hand.

Note: on the name I’ve given him: see my 6/1/20 posting “Aradesque”, on underwear model and pornstar Arad Winwin and a similar-looking underwear model I call Aradesque. PUMP! is pretty good about identifying its (many) models, but in about an hour and a half of searching through their material on the net, spread over two occasions, has turned up nothing useful, so he continues under my pseudonym.

Another note: on what to do with your hands when being photographed. You could just let them rest by your sides (an option illustrated below, from another PUMP! model). But you can also engage them with your body in various ways. Including, as above, with the involvement of lower-body garments. From my 10/5/19 posting “A man, his hands, his pants”:

So you’re a straight white guy, from North America or some place culturally similar. A photographer wants to take your picture. How do you pose your body? In particular, what do you do with your hands? More generally, what do you do with your hands when they’re not actually involved in your current activity? Then, what role do your lower garments — trousers, shorts, maybe underpants — play in the placement of your hands? And what, if anything, does your choice of placement signify?

So: adventures in hand-pants (or manual-bracal) kinesics.

(The examples include a fair number of gay guys.)

Reggie I. A neutral underwear pose (in those same PUMP! aqua briefs) from a model whose presentation of self is also neutral on the queer-straight scale (which means that in a heteronormative world, he’ll be taken to be straight):

(#2)

I’ve give this model a pseudonym too — Reggie, suggesting “regular guy” — because, despite his appearance in dozens and dozens of PUMP! ad photos, he doesn’t show up in a Google search for “PUMP! underwear models”. What you get in such a search is tons of incredibly hunky men displaying their bodies as objects of gay desire and presenting themselves as cruising intensely for sex (you can almost smell the sex sweat). As here:

(#3) Spanish model Kevin De La Cruz photographed by Adrian C. Martin for PUMP!

Reggie is totally not of this world. He comes from the world of 1950s newspaper ads for Fruit of the Loom underwear.

Aradesque II. Back again in today’s DJ mailing, now in neon green:

(#4) Yet another hand gesture, with his right hand: spread hand on belly, calling attention to his abs and pecs

And, yes, you can get Reggie in neon green too: just take #2 and change the color of the briefs. In fact, this seems to be where all the Reggie photos come from: a small number of basic Reggie poses (front, side, rear views), with the underwear added by digital manipulation. In effect, it’s all cloning.

Today’s my TV — Totally Vaccinated — Day, two weeks after I got my second Pfizer COVID-19 shot, the point when, authorities think, the vaccine is fully effective.

So this morning I ventured out in the neighborhood alone, for the first time in 13 months. With a (penguin) face mask, and using a walker (I’m still working on learning to walk again on my own), and only for a block (I still have the dyspnea problem from well before pandemic time — I had to stop two times along the way to catch my breath — and I’m going through a bad osteoarthritis patch, so most of my joints screamed) — but the hell with all that, it felt wonderful, like a fresh start.

I was wearing my GAY AS FCK t-shirt, but it was cool, so the tee was under a flannel shirt. And on that flannel shirt I had proudly pinned my badge:

(#1)

On the other ornamental elements of my ensemble:

From my 5/25/20 posting “Pandemic gifts”, the penguin face mask:

(#2)

And from my 6/18/20 posting “Exulting in Pride”, the t-shirt:

(#3)

All sorts of sociocultural messages to be read here.

Then there’s the flannel shirt. From my 12/28/20 posting “The flannel guys”, with a photo of me and Steven Levine, both in flannel shirts:

You can now find on Twitter plaintive cries about how hard it is to distinguish lumberjack/cowboy/country flannel from gay flannel — [cries] from straight guys trying to protect their flannel fantasies from the faggy stuff.

Steven and I are both gay, but in this photo we’re wearing guy flannel, not gay flannel. Yes, yes, I know, it’s hard to keep up with all of this.

(Men’s bodies as sexual objects — women’s, too — and sex between men, all of this discussed in street language, with edgy images, so not for kids or the sexually modest.)

At the intersection of the pinup-girl world (AZ Page here) and the premium men’s underwear world (AZ Page here), two recent ads from the Daily Jocks people: from 3/28, under the mail header “Model of the week: Freddy”, an ad for OnlyJox subscriptions, already of interest to me for its display of male buttocks as sexual objects for a male audience and for pushing the line between softcore and hardcore porn in doing so; and from 4/2, an ad for the DJ Easter sale, already of interest to me for its display of the front surface of the model’s body as series of sexual objects for a male audience, from the framing of his penis in a jockstrap though the sexualized presentation of his armpits, pectoral muscles and nipples.

The 4/2 ad is also quite clearly the photographer’s carefully composed re-creation of a classic pinup pose using a male model. And then I realized that that the 3/8 ad was in fact a bow to yet another classic pinup pose.

The two ads, from the wonderful world of designer jockstraps:

(#1) 3/28: the model Freddy, tail in the air, offering his ass; stroking his dick, apparently, out of our view; displaying his muscular shoulders and back (his traps and lats); fixing us with a knowing cruise face; and playing with his gorgeous springy hair (“and his hair was perfect” — Warren Zevon, “Werewolves of London”)

(#2) 4/2: the model I’ve called Aradesque, offering his dick; with his legs spread to suggest the availability of his ass; displaying his muscular pecs and abs and a hairy armpit; and with his cruise face (dark wide eyes in a carefully groomed and made-up face)

For gay men, the two primary sexual features of the male body are the asshole (to fuck) and the dick (to jack off, suck, or be fucked by). The buttocks are technically secondary sexual features — the fleshy portals to the asshole within. And then there are the other secondary features, further signals of attractive masculinity, in particular facial, body, and armpit hair; and powerful male musculature (Freddy’s back, Aradesques’s arms and torso).

Both models are performing versions of what I’ve called butch fagginess (see my 8/14/18 posting with that title, and others following it), in which a primarily high-masculinity (often exaggeratedly so) presentation of self is combined with at least a few elements that are conspicuously, conventionally un-masculine, indeed faggy: slogans on clothing, facial expressions, stance, a conveyed urgent need to get fucked (as with Freddy), un-masculine bits of clothing or colors (like Aradesque’s neon pink jock), make-up (Aradesque’s eye make-up is fabulous), whatever.

Freddy. Freddy is humped up, with his tail in the air, displaying his buttocks as sexual objects (and incidentally displaying the declivity of his lower back as sexual as well; see my 3/30/21 posting “Tramp stamps”, with its section on the erotic potential of the lower back).

Then from my 10/25/16 posting “tail in the air”, on the Fuck Me Please (FMP) interpretation of tail in the air:

FMP manages to combine the root sense of tail with its metonymic extension to the rump of an animal (including the buttocks of a human being) and the further metonymic extension from ‘rump, buttocks’ to ‘vagina’ (and to suggest a further metaphorical extension, in gay usage, from ‘vagina’ to ‘anus’) — so it hits all the sexualized senses of tail except the metaphorical (shape-based) extension to ‘penis’. The larger point is that FMP connotes receptivity and submission.

The crucial element in FMP is raising the hips, putting the rump up in the air. From Wikipedia:

Lordosis behavior, also known as mammalian lordosis (Greek lordōsis, from lordos “bent backward”) or presenting, is a body posture adopted by some mammals including humans, elephants, rodents, felines and others, usually associated with female receptivity to copulation. The primary characteristics of the behavior are a lowering of the forelimbs but with the rear limbs extended and hips raised, ventral arching of the spine and a raising, or sideward displacement, of the tail.

Or, as in “Sex positions for gay men” (from 2/12/16):

(4) bottom kneeling (a genicular fuck), commonly called doggie/doggy-fucking

— or, in crude terms, taking it like a bitch.

In fact, lordosis in dogs in heat is generally not nearly as pronounced as in, say, cats or rats, as you can see in this illustration from the Petsoid site (with pet advice) from 2/26/20, “How Long Does a Female Dog Stay in Heat” by Anna Liutko:

(#3)

Now, #1 is intended as porn; it’s an ad for DJ’s OnlyJox subscription service, which supplies images of DJ models for (I paraphrase) the private pleasures of the subscribers. Freddy in #1 is in between soft porn and hard porn (aka softcore and hardcore), but towards the high end; it’s pretty much right up against the line.

Linguistic digression: scales and labels. #1 belongs to the category of porn images, a category that is often conceptualized as a collection of images arranged on a scale between two end-points, two poles, customarily labeled as soft and hard, with the whole scheme analogized to other scales using these labels for the poles: hardness for minerals, for sleeping surfaces, for cheeses, for penile erections, etc.

I’ll leave the concept of scalarity unanalyzed here, trusting in your naive intuitions for my present purposes — though there’s a considerable literature in semantics on scales — but will concentrate on the assignment of labels.

A scale doesn’t necessarily have a conventional label, but those that do are often labeled with the label for one of the poles, which then serves as the unmarked pole. The scale at issue in this discussion of #1 is the scale labeled hardness, with the unmarked pole labeled hard — asking How hard is it? doesn’t entail that it’s hard — and the marked pole labeled soft — asking How soft is it? entails that it’s soft.

Another significant fact about scales is that intermediate elements frequently lack conventional names. Often when there are names for intermediate elements, these don’t pick out the halfway, or neutral, points, but instead are located by reference to one of the poles: semisoft cheeses, half-hard erections. I’m much taken with half-hard for reference to an intermediate state in porn that’s close to the hard pole — as in #1.

A similar labeling scheme for the erection hardness scale is presented in my 8/4/20 posting “Towards the high end of the  hardness scale”, from the British tv show Cucumber, Banana, and Tofu — with Tofu labeling the soft pole, Cucumber the hard pole, and Banana an intermediate half-hard point.

Aradesque. From my 3/19/21 posting “Personas and poses”, about an earlier DJ ad featuring the model I’ve called Aradesque, focused on scales and on his dick-framing gesture:

(#4)

Aradesque’s presentation of self is far to the queer end on the queer-straight scale [the straightness scale, with the straight pole as the unmarked end], but (within the queer domain) also far to the butch end of the fem-butch scale [the butchness scale, with the butch pole as the unmarked end].

Meanwhile, he’s performing a dick-framing gesture with his left hand, outlining a highly visible (though covered) half-hard penis — well short of a crotch grab, but similar in spirit to that gesture. In any case, it’s a homoerotically charged pose; he could just have rested his left hand lightly on his thigh, as he’s doing with his right hand.

But #2 is something else. It has the muscular body and the dick-framing gesture (but here with briefs in a less faggy color), but lacks the supine pose with a pitsntits display and the very cruisy face, include what seems to be fairly heavy eye make-up. So: a much faggier presentation than #4. It is in fact an easily recognizable take-off on a classic (female) pinup pose (though in the pinups, the woman’s legs aren’t spread, but are drawn up (sometimes raised in the air).

A famous example of the pose: Jane Russell in the movie The Outlaw (1943), seen here in a poster for the movie (with a phallic gun for extra sexual interest; remember that this material is created for a male audience, so phallic symbols have the virtue of providing a place in the picture for the men in this audience):

(#5)

The pitsntits gesture is designed to push the breasts forward and so to display them as much as possible. For women as models, sexual display for a male audience focuses on two secondary sexual features, breasts and buttocks — that is, tits and ass (aka t&a). The pose in #5  is a tits display. (An ass display will come along shortly.)

#5 is softporn pornography displaying tits. There is of course a parallel genre of softporn graphic art displaying tits, for example this drawing by pinup artist Gil Elvgren:

(#6)

So much for tits. On to ass. And back to …

Tail in the air (take 2). Now as a standard pinup pose. Here, just one example, a work on a Flickr site (with a gigantic phallic element as a bonus):

(#7) Mandy Galileo, Pinup Sonja_005a: “This is my sister Sonja who wanted to show she supports the war effort. At ’em boys, give her the gun!!! Shot at Naturally Naughty February 21, 2021.”

This takes us back to Freddy in the DJ ad in #1, which, in addition to its other associations, we can now see as a take-off on this pinup pose.

A lightning posting of today’s Daily Jocks ad, for the sake of the half-rhyming title (conveying ‘a crop top for a hot jock’), plus of course the hot hunk displaying his body seductively:

CROP TOPS

At [Daily Jocks] we are always on the lookout for what’s trending for men in all things underwear, activewear and fetishwear, like crop tops.
Wait! Are crop tops for men making a comeback? They never went away, shop our range of crop tops from Varsity …

The model’s ensemble. Sideline Tee from Varsity.  Ron Thong in black from Rufskin.

The tee is a crop top: a cropped t-shirt, exposing the male midriff, typically worn in certain sports contexts. From my 8/2/18 posting “Male crop tops!”, about those midriffs:

Some of them are are … the smooth bellies of sweet boys, beautiful young Apollo figures in a display of vulnerability

… But some are the furry abs of hunky men, powerful Dionysius figures in a display of muscularity …, or in the Hot Jock variant, all hard abs and athleticism

Meanwhile, the Sideline Tee shouts: JOCK ‘athlete’.

The half-rhyme. Its parts: Crop Top, the name of the type of garment.  Jock, referring to an athlete. And then Hot, because this guy undeniably is (and he knows it; he’s displaying his body crudely).

That gives four monosyllables, all with the same vowel (the phonetics of the vowel depending on your dialect), with the consonant offsets:

/ … t … k … p … p /

thus running through all three voiceless stops of English (which are in fact acoustically quite similar). Poetically very satisfying.

The display of the masculine body. To start with, his muscular abs and thighs. Then the cock tease with his thong. Finally, rough and dirty masculinity displayed in his very scruffy face. As the title says: hot. Totally unsubtle, but hot.

(Underwear models doing their thing, seductively. Plus Michelangelo’s David and a naked Venus by Bouguereau. So not to everyone’s taste, but not over the line.)

Today’s Daily Jocks ad (for the Cellblock 13’s Cyclone 2.0 Singlet) reproduces poses of head and body from classical Greek sculpture, poses that previously appeared on this blog in another Daily Jocks ad, in my 6/20/20 posting “Ephebe with a big package” — the big package being, in both cases, the model’s genitals, covered but also ostentatiously on display.

Today’s ad:

(2) [ad copy:] This singlet is made of luxuriously smooth Nylon/Spandex fabric with great stretch and recovery, with an extra-soft feel on the inside for comfort.

On the head pose: the model is looking downward, to his left. The head pose of the Praxiteles Ephebe of Marathon / Marathon Boy.

On the model’s stance: the model is standing with his weight on one foot (in this case his left); note his other, right, knee slightly raised. This is the contrapposto body stance of ancient Greek sculptures and much visual art since. Discussion below.

Last year’s ad:

(3) Package-display joggers this time

Again the model is looking down and to his left. And again standing with his weight on one foot, in this case his right; note his other, left, knee slightly raised.

From that earlier posting:

Then, about the model [above]: his head is a tribute to young masculine beauty in Greek terms, his groin a tribute to young masculine desirability in modern gay terms.

Contrapposto. From Wikipedia:

Contrapposto … is an Italian term that means “counterpoise”. It is used in the visual arts to describe a human figure standing with most of its weight on one foot, so that its shoulders and arms twist off-axis from the hips and legs in the axial plane [and the opposite knee will be raised somewhat].

First appearing in Ancient Greece in the early 5th century BCE, contrapposto is considered a crucial development in the history of Ancient Greek art (and, by extension, Western art), as it marks the first time in Western art that the human body is used to express a psychological disposition [of relaxation]. The style was further developed and popularized by sculptors in the Hellenistic and Imperial Roman periods, fell out of use in the Middle Ages, and was later revived during the Renaissance. Michaelangelo’s statue of David, one of the most iconic sculptures in the world,

(#4)

is a famous example of contrapposto.

Contrapposto (weight on the right leg, left knee raised) but without the Praxiteles head pose; David is looking to his left, but upwards. As for his package, it’s not at all conspicuous, and wasn’t meant to be, but a great many visitors to the original in Florence apparently consider it to be the major draw.

Not just men.  Among the illustrations in my 3/11/18 posting “Annals of shirtlessness: French neo-classicism”:

(#5) Bouguereau’s Birth of Venus, with the Praxiteles head pose and the contrapposto stance (weight on the left foot, right knee raised).

The raw, crude masculinity is supplied by the hairy centaurs in the painting.

Falling together this year on 5/7: No Pants Day (the first Friday in May); and, now that you have your pants off, the way is smoothed for you to celebrate a May 7th event, Masturbation Day, if you have a mind to.

(#1) An appeal from Comics Kingdom (an on-line platform for King Features Syndicate), with Dennis the Menace as their spokescharacter for the occasion; note the usage in the name of the day — AmE pants, referring to outerwear, vs. BrE pants ‘underpants’

No Pants Day. According to Wikipedia, it’s

an annual event in various countries. It is held on the first Friday in May. It requires publicly wearing just undergarments on the lower part of the body.

Two examples from the comics, both with the underwear in unexpected places:

(#2) From Rhymes With Orange, by Rina Piccolo and Hilary Price: a knight in armor, but only from the waist up

(#3) From Brewster Rockit, by Tim Rickard: the captain on a space ship

Three observations about NPD in the comics.

— Observation one: to judge from the Comics Kingdom samples for NPD, cartoon men all wear boxers rather than briefs, probably to make it clear what they’re wearing: cartoon guys’ underwear seems never to have visible flies, so briefs will look like a swimming suit (and swimming suits often come in bright and complex patterns); but boxers can be distinguished from gym shorts so long as they sport one of those patterns, as they very often do — here’s a whole officeful of them:

(#4) From Blondie, by Dean Young and John Marshall: five boldly patterned boxers

(I’m a briefs guy myself, and have been since childhood, though my kid briefs were plain white. My father was a boxers guy; my mother was inclined to afflict him with eye-catching thematic patterned boxers as gifts, but on his own he went for neutral-color solids or simple patterns, but not white. As far as I can recall, there was no father-son issue about underwear styles; each of us just went his own way.)

— Observation two: some of the NPD comics take No Pants all the way to naked from the waist down — no outerwear pants, no underpants either, as here:

(#5) From Loose Parts by Dave Blazek

— Observation three: several of the NPD comics make something of the fact that cartoon animals virtually never have pants (of either sort), as here:

(#6) From Shoe, by Gary Brookins, Susie MacNelly, and Ben Lansing

The Comics Kingdom NPD site provides a list of organizations to donate to, some suggested by particular cartoonists.

Masturbation Day. See my 5/1/17 posting “Months and days”, especially on May 7 — among a number of proposals — as my choice for the date (blame Good Vibrations in San Francisco). Here’s the graphic for Masturbation Month:

(#7)

There’s a Page on this blog with annotated links to my postings about masturbation. It’s a recurrent topic, since I’m something of a masturbation enthusiast, a guy with a jack-off jones.

(On homomasculinities, with plain talk about men’s bodies and sex between men. So not for the sexually modest, and at best inadvisable for kids.)

The Daily Jocks mailing yesterday (5/10), with an ad under the header “Mask for Masc?”:

(#1) [ad copy:] $10 MASKS: This reusable two-layer fabric face mask is manufactured from a high quality fabric. Get one for just $10 while stocks last

This is the underwear model I have been calling Aradesque, used in advertising largely to convey butch fagginess, here wearing a mask announcing quite publicly that he’s butch / masculine. So he’s claiming a gender identity that would normally be inferred from the clear evidence of publicly visible characteristics: stance, gesture, facial expression, and so on — it’s something you show, not something you announce.

As a result, announcing that you are masculine, macho, or butch suggests that you are unsure that the high (in your estimation) level of your masculinity can be correctly inferred from  your visible characteristics, and so undercuts your claim; if you have to tell people how butch you are, you’re probably not very butch.

On the other hand, mask and masc make a cute pun. Maybe that’s all that’s going on in #1.

And then there’s the possibility that the character Aradesque is playing in #1 is boasting, with self-assurance, that he’s solidly masculine.

The problem with severely abbreviated messages is that they can convey so many different things. More on this theme below, on the sexual associations of unicorns.

Earlier on this channel. DJ has used the image in #1 before. From my 11/2/20 posting “A diversion at the beginning of election week”: the image; the caption, “A bit of word play on mask and masc(uline), underwear models being chosen for their projection of high masculinity (as here)”; and the ad copy, “Wearing a mask doesn’t have to be boring, keep yourself & others safe with DJX’s new Party At Home masks. Available in 6 styles.”

The 6 styles:

(#2) Preferences (BOTTOM) and identities (MASC, MACHO, GAY.A.F.; the first two might be intended to convey the preference TOP as well as an identity), plus the instruction OPEN WIDE (to take my cock in your mouth), conveying a dominant sexual persona; UNICORN is relatively inscrutable — see discussion below

Wearing labels. In #2, some of the labels. Here, worn in the most publicly visible way possible, on masks. Otherwise, labels are commonly displayed on t-shirts (dozens of examples on this blog), where they can be flaunted (in some contexts) or concealed under a jacket, overshirt, or sweater (in other contexts); and on underwear, especially on  waistbands, especially the waistbands of jockstraps (which then become homowear rather than gymwear).

Why wear labels? Preference labels are suited for a cruising or tricking context, where they can replace or reduce the negotiation talk that so many man find difficult. I have worn GAY AS FUCK and similar labels as political statements, public reminders that We Are Everywhere and that we don’t necessarily “look gay”. Some men flaunt labels as a kind of camp performance, deliberately outrageous — the only reason I can see for OPEN WIDE.

The case of UNICORN. Only too many associations and uses, even if we confine ourselves to sexual understandings. Some notes, loosely arranged.

— the unicorn is an obvious phallic symbol, so is associated with aggressive sexuality, or more generally with queer men

—  from NOAD on the noun unicorn:

… 2 [a] something that is highly desirable but difficult to find or obtain: an album like this is something of a unicorn. …

which allows more specific reference to someone who is remarkably attractive and sexually powerful (as in various Urban Dictionary entries)

—  from my 3/19/17 posting “Sexting with emoji”: among the emoji, the

(Rainbow) Unicorn Head, which could be treating the unicorn merely as a magical gay creature [so that it could signal gay identity or gay pride]; or could convey horniness (with the unicorn serving as a phallic symbol); or, remarkably, signify a bisexual woman available for three-way sex with a couple (why a unicorn? you ask — because such women are as rare as unicorns, to the point of non-existence).

— then there is an association of unicorns with rainbows (and rainbows with queerness); in fact, unicorns are reputed to defecate rainbows (and in a widely distributed image, to urinate them)

— from my 7/4/13 posting “On the unicorn watch”, on rainbow – butterfly – unicorn associations

Butch fagginess. (Back to Aradesque, the model in #1.) There is now a Page on this blog of fairly heavily annotated links to my postings on the topic. From an early posting “Butch fagginess”, from 8/14/18:

[Barcode Berlin]’s crop tees display attractive midriffs, and the models project muscular masculinity — solidly butch — but the tees also convey sociosexual messages in teasing and boastful ways that echo the open banter of queer men amongst themselves, acting faggy …

… [One tee] advertises “I’m a slut, honey”, while the rest of the model’s presentation shouts “And I’m all man!” (Others are more outrageous). And if you ask me, that’s just as it should be: we’re men, and we should be comfortable with that; we desire men, so we should value (some forms of) masculinity in other men; however, we reject central aspects of heteronormative sexuality, and our behavior should reflect that (proudly and defiantly, if necessary); and we embrace means of establishing and reinforcing communities with one another, so we adopt (some) ways of behaving that both unite us and set us apart from other men.

… The [other] t-shirt slogans:

Get Naked, Cheap and Easy, Bitch, Bear, Fetish, Bitch I’m Fabulous, Fuck Off, Love Boys

… These garments scream “I’m queer! And butch! And that’s wonderful! You too?” They’re advertisements for one specifically gay style of masculinity. There are others: celebratorily fem(me)/sissy styles …; gender-fluid styles; “regular guy” homosexuality (attempting to adopt all the trappings of heteronormative masculinity except for the sex of one’s partner); MSM “just sex” configuration of male-male pairing (embracing mansex as celebratory male bonding while rejecting gay as identity, community, or source of affectional partnership); and hypermasculine homosexuality (Berlin Barcode caters to this audience in many of its products).

(Men displaying their bodies in underwear ads, leading to men in revealing leather, engaged in kinky sex — not suitable for kids or the sexually modest.)

Fun fetishwear for gay men, from the new brand Vaux. From the ad copy on Daily Jocks:

Vaux brings fetishwear inspiration from Cellblock13 & pairs this with fun prints to add a new twist to your underwear drawer.

and on the International Jock site:

From the makers of Timoteo and CellBlock 13: conceived during a visit to the Vauxhall district of South London, VAUX is a new brand created for and inspired by the diverse and ever-evolving queer community.

and, with more detail, on the Men and Underwear site, “Jockstraps and Matching Harnesses by VAUX and Cellblock13 at jockstraps.com” on 8/20/20:

The VAUX VX2 Harness is designed to accentuate your back and show off your chest. It is made of high-quality coated and printed neoprene with spandex piping in contrasting colours. This is a structured harness with adjustable snaps for fit and comfort. Two adjustable straps come down your torso, with metal hoops and hooks that connect to either your jeans or to Vaux VX2 Zipper Jock for a full gear look. The torso straps can also be removed if you choose to wear it strictly as an upper body harness. [There are also facemasks.]

Examples from the three sources:

In the Daily Jocks mailing of 4/26:

(#1) Muscle hunk, rear view, bulldog harness and low rise briefs, in Vaux’s Zebra Pink pattern

Then, on the International Jock site:

(#2) Lean swimmer-body, front view, bulldog harness and a thong, in Vaux’s Black Rose pattern

Finally, on the Men and Underwear site:

(#3) Muscle hunk, front view, bulldog harness, torso straps, and zipppered jockstrap, in Vaux’s Leopard Blue pattern

(#4) Muscle hunk, front view, facemask, bulldog harness, and torso straps, in Vaux’s Black Floral pattern

Two notes.

First, a harness is the crucial piece of apparel in making this fetishwear; underwear that advertises a man’s package and/or his buttocks is just sexy display. But (from my 12/24/15 posting “More harnesses”),

On a man, a harness, especially a black leather one, is a display of the wearer’s body and a projection of masculinity, in combination with a presentation of the wearer either as a dominant stud or as a submissive.

More on harnesses, especially in bdsm sexual encounters, below.

Second, the significance of the color black and the material leather.

In the world of gay fetishes, black is the basic color, signifying

high masculinity (butch vs. fem(me) / faggy), a preference for the insertive role in gay sex (top in fucking, fellatee in sucking, vs. bottom / fellator), and deep seriousness (vs. playfulness and camp),

with leather and dominant / master (vs. submissive / slave) as basic fetishes; in the hanky code, black also signals sado-masochism. Other colors, conspicuously displayed, are drawn from the gay hanky code: light blue for oral / sucking, dark blue for anal / fucking, red for fisting, gray for bondage, yellow for watersports / piss play, brown for scat / shit play.

For harnesses, black is the basic color — in latex, silicone, rubber, but especially in leather.

Leather enters into these things in several ways. Through the sensual attractions of the material, in touch and smell. Through its supple strength and warmth, which make it a good material for sturdy garments, in particular, uniforms of many kinds (and also for restraining devices) — uses that gave rise to a (general) male leather subculture associated with motorcycles and motorcycle gangs and to a specifically gay leather subculture focused on leather uniforms of many kinds (for their high masculinity and their concordance with bdsm practices and subcultures), as celebrated especially in the homoerotic art of Tom of Finland.

People can experience their involvement with leather — or with any other fetish or paraphilic object (see my Page on fetishes and paraphilias) — in a variety of ways: as an individual sexual matter, an object of attraction, desire, and sexual practices; as a kind of sexual identity, a matter not just of what you feel and do, but of who you are (often crystallized by learning about other people’s desires and practices); or as membership in a sexual community or subculture, with shared practices, a sense of communal identity, and often with subcultural institutions, rituals, and symbols.

Harnesses. In black leather, suitable for bdsm encounters. There are many types of harnesses (reviewed in a series of postings on this blog), but two — bulldog and X — are the everyday styles. Examples, bulldog first. From Etsy, made by BDSMinsomnia, front and rear:

(#5) Description on the Etsy site: Classic men’s harness BULLDOG Style very hot sex harness for man

(#6) Descriptors on the Etsy site: genuine leather bulldog harness, brutal harness, leather chest harness, men’s harness, BDSM leather

The bulldog harness is the usual first harness for a man who’s just getting into leather. It’s compatible with either dominant or submissive status, but is often seen as especially well suited for submissives, since the D rings in the front and back can support a strap with attachments for the wearer’s genitalia in the front, his anus in the rear. (Illustrations to follow in a moment.) It’s also easily combined with some form of slave collar or slave chain to make a man’s submissive status clear.

In fact, he model in #5/6 is designed specifically for submissives, since  all the buckles are in the back, where the wearer can’t fasten or unfasten them himself, but must rely on his dominant to do it for him.

Now those D rings. From Mr. S Leather, a bulldog harness with extra straps:

(#7) Bulldog with a cockstrap (a strap with a cockring attachment)

(#8) Bulldog with an all-around strap (could also be used with a buttplug strap)

With these additional straps, every step you take will have you thinking about your dick. With your cock getting a nice tug with every movement you’re going to have a hard time keeping it down!

The cockstrap connects to the front D-ring on the Bulldog Harness 2.0 and an included two inch metal cockring connects your junk to your chest. Whatever moves you’re making, you get a nice pull on your cock.

Really up the ante with the All-Around Strap. This includes the cockstrap but also a strap that goes up back. It makes for a hot look both coming and going!

On to X harnesses. From the Army of Men gear site:

(#9) The Sergeant X harness (with snap fasteners on all strap ends)

And an X harness in action — Rafael Alencar (in the harness) and François Sagat (sucking Alencar’s cock) in a Falcon / Naked Sword store ad for a May 2021 DVD sale:

(#10) With snap hooks on the strap ends

Bonus: the leather dom/sub photography of Matt Spike. In searching for harness / leather / bdsm images for this posting, I came across this arresting leather slave photo from the Guardian‘s files:

(#10) Heavy leather appare, slave chain, bulldog harness with cockstrap

The photographer was Matt Spike. From his website (which goes back and forth between 3rd person and 1st person):

Matt Spike is a fetish artist who uses video, photography and human installations to illustrate his view of fetishism, queer identity and homoeroticism. I’m full of ideas and concepts relating to submission and dominance and the superficiality of sexuality; a politically-minded person, I like to include an edge in most of my images as I believe taboos should always be challenged; and as an admirer of subculture, I gravitate towards left-field, bizarre tastes in sexual practice.

As an artist, the fuel in Matt’s engine is his drive to create “kinky art and push it further than we thought imaginable”. Matt has street cred: “I started working as a leather escort at 22 years old. At that time, not many young kids were domming, and my mind was still young, getting warped quickly by exposure to fantasies of death, suffering, humiliation, exhibition, and voyeurism.

Two further Spike photos:

(#11) A slave boy (with, among other things, a bulldog harness)

And a double-fetish young man (a leather slave, in X harness and heavy slave collar, arms cuffed behind his back, with a black leather blindfold; doing duty on his (protected) knees as a piss slave, a human urinal among the porcelain fixtures, in a black leather urinal gag:

(#12)

Look so hot and feels so sexy. All this earnest assumption of roles in black leather is powerful and moving, but sometimes fags just want to have fun; the gear looks so hot on your body and it feels so sexy, why not play with it?

From my 5/5/20 posting “Play me, Sam”, on

an ad for Sparta’s colorful fetishwear: harnesses and underwear …

Show off your fierce warrior side when you buckle and secure yourself into a Spartan’s Latex Harness.

Well, the men might be fierce and muscular, but their fetish apparel is decidedly fashion-forward, in luscious intense colors and designs. Would straight guys wear such things? Probably not, but then it wasn’t designed for them. It’s butch fagginess, designed for macho queers who flaunt their sexuality. [See now the Page on this blog on butch fagginess.]

It’s a homomasculine genre of clothing to accompany a particular brand of homomasculine presentation of self.  A genre that brings us stocky muscle bears in bright pink mini-briefs

… And even sweaty scruffy muscle hunks embracing passionately:

(#13)

The signal of those wonderfully neon-colored bulldog harnesses is not, I imagine, availability for fucking (dark blue) and fist-fucking (red), but rather invitation to appreciate and marvel at the men’s fabulously developed pecs. Hey, buddy, don’t you wanna play with our pecs, lick our sweat, maybe suck on our tits? Go for it, honey; we’re going to be gazing passionately into each other’s eyes and kissing like sex-crazed minks, but our remarkable pecs and abs are right out there for you to enjoy, and our major hard-ons too!

(Much about men’s bodies and sex between men, in plain language — not suitable for kids or the sexually modest.)

An ad on my Facebook page yesterday, with (as caption) its teaser copy:

(#1) Now selling the Cellblock 13 Atlas Jockstrap / Harness at Jockstraps.com. If you are looking for a light-weight, affordable elastic harness and jock then check out this all new product

The model’s body and face, the (bulldog) harness, and the jockstrap are all hot (in my view as an appreciator of the underwear ad genre). But then the lines the harness and jockstrap form in the photographer’s composition make for a pleasing abstract composition on their own. And the model’s posture, his gestures, and his facial expression are all satisfyingly packed with allusions to art, both high art and popular art.

Background: the presentation of the model. The model (call him C.B., for Cellblock) presents himself as a high-macho muscle-stud — a very common presentation for underwear models. He’s clearly a serious bodybuilder (just look at the enormous biceps and triceps, and the deep inguinal creases) and has fashioned his face as butch (neat masculine mustache and short beard in a scruffy face; short hair).

But the messages of C.B.’s body are complex, in part because Cellblock 13 presents itself as a queer and fetish-oriented brand. To affirm that message, C.B. is wearing very conspicuous earrings.

Even more strikingly, you’d expect a serious bodybuilder to have astounding abs, and C.B. surely has them, but they’ve been smoothed over by the photographer — presumably as part of the project to assemble references to art; world-class abs would have detracted from that program, so they’ve been made much less obtrusive.

The model’s stance is a strongly opposed contrapposto posture, with one leg raised, and with hips and shoulders slanted in opposition to one another. The opposite angling of the upper body and the lower body causes the straps of the homowear to form two Ts: a top one (sharply angled down across the model’s chest) with an underarm strap as its cross stroke; and a lower one (slightly angled up across the model’s hips) with the hip strap as its cross stroke)

Background: the nature of the jockstrap. The full ad copy:

The Cellblock13’s Atlas Jockstrap is the perfect combination of sport jock, fetish jock and fashion jock and possibly CB13’s most comfortable jocks to date with a naturally contoured soft viscose pouch with a hint of spandex for shape expansion and retention. It’s also has four-way stretch to accommodate most guys.  Pair this jock with the matching Atlas harness (sold separately) for a complete look.  Features a contrast stripe down the center as well as contrast piping on the edges of the pouch.  CB13 rubberized logo is centered on front waistband. 95% Viscose 5% Spandex. Contrast piping: blue, red, grey, army green.

The straps as elements of the jockstraps — waistband and pouch stripe — and the constituents of the harnesses are all black, and the contrast piping in #1 is grey, as close to black as possible. So the garments are macho black.

On the other hand, the straps aren’t rough and tough black leather, but instead are stretchy and comfortable. Again, the garments offer mixed messages. (The ad copy claims the Atlas jockstrap is “the perfect combination of sport jock, fetish jock and fashion jock”, and it certainly looks like a combination of fetish jock and fashion jock — the mixed messages I just referred to — but I find it hard to credit the Atlas as an actual sport jock. It doesn’t look like it offers enough support or could wick up nearly enough sweat, and in any case it’s so visibly a fetish + fashion statement that I can’t imagine it surviving the gaze of real athletes in real locker rooms. It’s a queer jockstrap, and that’s wonderful, but its natural home is in gay dance clubs, circuit parties, and bedrooms, not locker rooms.)

Side note. I don’t know the names of the model in #1 (the one I’ve called C.B.) or the photographer who shot #1, but they deserve credit for their work. I have made an unsuccessful pass at discovering their names, but I know from previous attempts at similar searches that if a quick first pass doesn’t work, the task will probably consume many hours (and I’ve still failed at several searches) — hours I don’t have now and probably never will have.

The art of #1. I’ve already mentioned the contrapposto stance in #1. For some discussion, see my 4/19/21 posting “Cellblock ephebe”, which supplies three examples of interest here: an underwear ad, a famous sculpture, and a famous painting:

(#2) Ad for the Cellblock 13’s Cyclone 2.0 Singlet; contrapposto stance, Praxiteles pose of the head (looking down and to the side), but otherwise not notably art-allusive — though it’s certainly an effective piece of beefcake, male art functioning as soft porn, and it shares with #1 a dick stripe drawing attention to the model’s crotch

(#3) Michelangelo’s David; also note the (left) hand raised to the neck (holding the sling David used to kill the giant)

(#4) Bouguereau’s Birth of Venus; note also her (left) arm held over and behind her head, in what I’ll call the overhand position — here, as part of playing with her hair, but otherwise familiar to me in a different context

Some moments of popular art. Following on the overhand arm position in #1 (and, I think coincidentally, in #4). The overhand position in #1 struck me as one prominently used in body displays or offers, of one armpit and one breast (in a cheesecake pose, with the breast and its nipple as the focus; or in a beefcake pose, with the armpit and the nipple as alternative foci).

The cheesecake pose is a classic, designed to push the model’s breast on that side out. Here’s a modern version, on the junebug weddings site, in “These Modern Pin-Up Boudoir Photos Will Take Your Breath Away” by gabby on 7/2/16:

(#5)

If you think of outdated 1940s fashion when you hear “pin-up,” prepare to think again! This modern pin-up boudoir shoot from is full of updated details like sequined lingerie and sleek backdrops, while still paying homage to classic pin-up with quintessential poses and super bold va-va-voom makeup. We love how Sarah Haimes of Shuttergram Portraits captured this boudoir model with such gorgeousness and natural light.

The pose has the incidental effect of exposing the model’s armpit on that side. But the sexual power of the arm gesture (for straight men) springs from the advancing of one breast (with the nipple on it).

As a piece of beefcake intended for a gay male audience, however, both the exposed armpit and the showcasing of the  pectoral muscle on that side (with the nipple on it) are sexually charged. Poses that provide both charges I’ve called pitsntits displays. (There’s a pits ‘n’ tits Page on this blog listing postings with such displays; they are very common in men’s underwear ads and in ads for gay porn.) Two-sided displays have the hands held at the back of the head; one-sided displays most often have the hand at the back of the head, but sometimes they use the overhand position, as in this (well-made) soft-porn display from porn actor and model Colton Ford:

(#6)

The significant resemblances between #1  and #6 lie in the overhand position, the extraordinary upper-arm muscle development, and the prominent dick. Think of these features as a  bit of shared soft porn; the rest of #1 is mostly art allusions. Note especially Ford’s facial expression: he’s gazing right at the viewer with an intense cruise face — C.B. in #1, in contrast, has his face (with closed eyes) down and to the side, performing a version of Bernini’s The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, which I’ll turn to in a moment.

But first I point out that the pitsntits material on this blog is almost entirely about displays, or (somewhat more actively) offers, of the body.

Briefly, notes on the takeup of such offers.

— armpits: in my 3/5/17  posting “Body work III: Axillary Delights”, with a section on the smelling and licking of armpits (pitplay) as sexual pleasures for (many) gay men

And with autoerotic pleasure in sniffing one’s own armpit, as in this ad for herringbone-pattern underwear:

(#7)

Or, more dramatically (but also more hazily), in this screen shot from a gay porn video:

(#8)

— nipples: in my 2/25/17 posting “Displaying your nipples”, including a section on giving and getting nipple stimulation (titplay) as sexual pleasures for (many) gay men

In the case of nipple play, pleasurable stimulation can give way to (often pleasurable) pain. From Men’s Health magazine, “The 13 Best Nipple Clamps You Can Buy Online: Who knew pain could feel so good?” by Zachary Zane on 1/19/21:

If you’re looking for a sex toy that elicits a powerful reaction throughout your entire body, then you should totally consider nipple clamps. When your nipples are pinched, the sensation isn’t just localized to your nips — you get a rush of adrenaline and endorphins that sends a powerful, pleasurable sensation coursing through your veins. Nipple clamps make you feel alive, dammit.

The pleasurable stimulation can by autoerotic, stroking or otherwise playing with your nipples. So can pain; you can apply nipple clamps — even just clothespins — to your own nipples. Or, of course, the pain can be part of a sub + dom scene with a partner.

Ecstasy. You might think that C.B. in #1 is just engaged in some autoerotic armpit sniffing, but his expression goes beyond simple pleasure to the closed eyes and slackly open mouth of ecstasy, in this case erotic ecstasy.

The model is the sculpture The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa. From Wikipedia:

(#9) Close-up of the head in the sculpture –in religious ecstasty, but looking a lot like a sexual O-face

The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (alternatively Saint Teresa in Ecstasy or Transverberation of Saint Teresa; in Italian: L’Estasi di Santa Teresa or Santa Teresa in estasi) is the central sculptural group in white marble set in an elevated aedicule in the Cornaro Chapel, Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome. It was designed and completed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the leading sculptor of his day [in 1647-52], who also designed the setting of the Chapel in marble, stucco and paint. It is generally considered to be one of the sculptural masterpieces of the High Roman Baroque. It depicts Teresa of Ávila.

Compare Matthew Bosch in sexual ecstasy while riding Dirk Caber’s cock (in TitanMen’s Package):

(#10)

On ecstasy, from Wikipedia:

Ecstasy (from Ancient Greek ἔκστασις ékstasis, meaning ‘outside of oneself’) is a subjective experience of total involvement of the subject, with an object of their awareness. In classical Greek literature it refers to removal of the mind or body “from its normal place of function.”

… From a psychological perspective, ecstasy is a loss of self-control and sometimes a temporary loss of consciousness, which is often associated with religious mysticism, sexual intercourse and the use of certain drugs.

From my 8/23/13 posting “Given over to desire”:

In writing about facial expressions during gay sex (especially, during man-on-man intercourse), I’ve remarked on an ecstatic expression often shown by one partner (usually, the bottom) or both of them. From a posting on “Captioned croppings”, this example of mutual ecstasy (mouths open, eyes narrowed or fully shut):

(#11) Tommy Defendi (slack mouth) fucking Jimmy Fanz (tight mouth) in Raging Stallion’s Hole 1

The expressions are an outward manifestation of an inner state of mind (and body), an intense giving over of one’s self to, or losing one’s conscious self in, the sexual experience — an ecstasy or rapture. Gay men sometimes speak of a bottom in this transcendant state as being in heat

Finally, a note on vocabulary, from AZ on LLog, 12/3/06: “Does anybody have a word for this? We do now.” (on come face and O face as terms for ‘facial expression during orgasm’):

For your entertainment: Details magazine has been printing O-face quizzes, with a display of twenty faces (of both sexes).  In the October issue (p. 180) it’s “Game Face or O-Face?”, in which your task is to distinguish “an ace tennis player’s expression of exertion and a porn star’s look of ecstasy.”  In the November issue (p. 104) it’s “Idol Face or O-Face?”, which provides some “contorted expressions of an aspiring pop idol” and some “of a seasoned porn star.” Now in the December issue (p. 132) it’s “Guitar Face or O-Face?”

(Much attention to men’s bodies, wearing nothing but what’s billed as fetishwear / kinkwear. Not over the raunch line, but possibly not to some readers’ tastes.)

It starts with some photos of ensembles of bulldog harness plus jockstrap, all in high-macho black, but differing in significant details — of the model’s body, the way his body is displayed in the photos, and the garments he is wearing. With respect to the oppositions

hairy – smooth
raw – refined
authentic – synthetic

Presentation 1. From my 5/24 posting “The Ecstasy of St. Atlas”:

(#1) Cellblock 13 Atlas line harness and jockstrap in black: the model’s posture, his gestures, and his facial expression are all satisfyingly packed with allusions to art, both high art and popular art (the soft porn of cheesecake and beefcake) — so surprisingly refined

Meanwhile, the model’s body is smooth — very muscular, strongly masculine, and quite smooth. The harness and jock are fetishwear black, but they’re mostly constructed from elastic straps; they’re notably comfortable rather than aggressively tough.

Presentation 2. From Daily Jocks in a 5/26 ad, more elastic straps, but with a more conventional presentation of the model’s body, posed flat against a background, as in most underwear ads (but sitting up in bed, rather than standing in front of some neutral background):

(#2) [ad copy:] Get party ready with the DJX Trough Collection. This stand-alone elastic harness squares off the chest to create a defined masculine look. Pair with the matching socks, jockstrap and shorts for the ultimate party look.

Meanwhile, the model’s body is hairy — very muscular, strongly masculine, and notably hairy, in contrast to the body in #1. The presentation of his body shares with that in #1 what I’ve called the overhand arm position, a soft porn pitsntits presentation. And both models are displaying prominent earrings, presumably to convey to their primarily gay male audience that these guys are macho, but definitely gay.

Still the stretchy elastic straps. So on to some real leather for fetish / kink apparel.

Presentation 3. Sliding from the world of synthetics into the (authentic) leather world, a Charliebymz (Charlie by matthew zink) adjustable genuine leather chest harness [a bulldog, or H, harness, as above] with gold hardware and 1 1/8″ straps:

(#3) Even hairier model than in #2, with genuine leatherwear (the company also offers gear made of “vegan leather”, a euphemism for faux leather), but with some prettified features: the gold hardware, an elastic rather than leather pouch

The model’s stance is canted somewhat to one side (as in #1), so there’s some artfulness to the presentation of his body.

Presentation 4. From the Army of Men site, some “just the leather, man” gear from a devoted kink/fetish company of gay men. First the leather harness, then the leather jockstrap, both displayed on a smooth-bodied well-muscled model standing artlessly against a white background:

(#4) Army of Men leather bulldog harness with stainess steel hardware

(#5) Army of Men leather jock with stainless steel hardware and a matching codpiece

From the company’s About page (their postal address is in Alexandria NSW, Australia):

ARMY OF MEN is Derrick, Richard, and Raf.
A bunch of kinksters who wanted to make something happen.
We are just 3 guys who nerd out on designing, making, and photographing our gear.
Every product is designed and sewn by Derrick.
Every product is cut and assembled by Richard.
Every photo/video is shot and produced by Raf.
Everything you see here is done by us.

Jacob and Esau. Now the text for today, from Genesis chapter 27 (KJV):

¹¹ And Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man

… on t-shirts from the Hear Our Voice on-line store (“empowering feminist clothing” — also clothing on Black, LGBTQ+, kindness, and disability rights themes), in a Facebook ad today (I believe the shirts are available from other sources as well). In the ad, a complex pun (both verbal and visual) on the song title “Proud Mary”; and then, elsewhere on the site, a pun on the religious exclamation amen.

The ad: Proud Mary. Featuring this image:

(#1) “Proud Mary”, the Creedence Clearwater Revival song; the Virgin Mary; proud, as in Gay Pride; and Mary’s Rainbow Flag coloring, also for Pride

(From my 3/11/19 posting “Roland B. McRiver”: “the Creedence Clearwater Revival hit “Proud Mary” — “Rollin’ on the River”: “Proud Mary” is … a steamboat traveling up and down the Mississippi River”.)

The tee comes in a variety of background colors, not just black and white. Here it is in eye-popping Cyber Pink:

(#2)

So much for the Virgin Mary, on to God. And the exclamatory conclusion to prayers to him by the devoted, pun-perverted to an exclamation over men — with the addition of rainbow colors, to an appreciation of men’s physical charms:

(#3) “Lo! He comes, with clouds descending”: God descends in a rainbow cloud, intoning (in deity-sized rainbow letters), AH, MEN

(Again, the shirt comes in many colors, including this excellent purple.)

I don’t know who first appreciated the homoerotic potential of amen, but it was enshrined in the 1970s in the name of a homowear store. From my 11/6/16 posting “Wearing the 1970s”, about

Ah Men, an haut-pédé West Hollywood store that I occasionally actually shopped at and in any case was the source of a catalog, simultaneously fabu and tacky, that enabled men to mail-order its wares up in discreetly labeled packages

(#4) A glistening trio of Ah Men offerings: son, father, and holy spirit

On Facebook yesterday, from Aric Olnes, following up on my “Sacrilegious puns for Pride Month” posting that day:

Below your [“Sacrilegious puns”] post on my newsfeed: rainbows & penguins !!

(#1) ORIGINAL PENGUIN: A FULL LIFESTYLE CLOTHING BRAND (from Munsingwear, featuring the Munsingwear penguin mascot, Pete)

A cute, jokey, très gay guy in his simple rainbow stripes tank top (from the Original Penguin line of clothing), deliriously savoring a slice of rainbow cake (sold separately); still more little rainbow penguins on his shorts.

Another item in the line, a t-shirt with little rainbow penguins sashaying across it:

(#2)

Elsewhere on this blog, with a section on the Munsingwear Original Penguin line, with illustrations: my 12/25/17 posting “Xmas news for penguins”.

Smells like queer teen spirit.

Ads for the Boy Smells company have been popping up with some regularity in my Facebook feed — no doubt because I posted a while back on some fragrances for men, one of the two scented product lines the company offers, the other being candles. A third line is underwear, all of it explicitly labeled by the company, “This comes unscented”, but in an ad for Boy Smells products, it’s hard not to think of pungent teenager skivvies. Some ads combine the boy image of actor Tommy Dorfman with an Extra Vert Candle. Ad copy:

Discover the intimate world of Boy Smells with unique candles, fragrances & underwear. 10% of Proceeds From The Pride Collection Will Be Donated to Support the Trevor Project [providing suicide prevention efforts among LGBT+ youth].

(#1) The boyish Tommy Dorfman, something of a queer, and genderqueer, icon — attired in jade

(#2) French vert ‘green’ (suggesting the green herb tones in the scent) + extravert / extrovert ‘an outgoing, expressive person’

On the N + N compound boy smell. Like all such compounds, it’s many-ways ambiguous, with two especially salient readings:

a Source (subject-like) reading ‘smell of boys, scent like one that boys give off’ (Joe’s bedroom reeked of boy smell, which offended his mother but really turned his gay buddy Sam on) vs. a Goal (object-like) reading ‘smell for boys, scent like one that boys appreciate’ (Tony thinks lilac and freesia are girl smells, while juniper and spruce are boy smells)

Boy Smells is supposed to have the Goal reading, but the Source reading tends, unfortunately, to obtrude. Which is why Boy Smells isn’t a great trade name — unless you intend to play with the possibility of the raunchy Source reading.

Then there’s an ambiguity in the noun smell, which can convey the more general sense ‘scent, odor’ or the more specific ‘unpleasant odor, reek’. Again, the nasty reading tends to obtrude, suggesting that the company is offering candles and colognes with scents like gasoline and cigar smoke (which many men appreciate because of their associations with masculinity).

The Boy Smells product lines.

— the scented candles come in a number of collections; in particular, the Pride Collection has five scents in it: Rosalita, Philia, Ambrosia, Extra Vert, and Dynasty. You’ll have to look at the descriptions on the Boy Smells site to puzzle out what the company thinks makes a scent LGBT+-appropriate. Beats me.

— much the same for what makes their “cologne de parfum” (gender-neutral fragrance) line especially suitable for LGBT+-folk:

(#3)

— then the (unscented, smell-free) underwear, which the company sometimes coyly calls unmentionables. From the site:

(#4) Yes, I too am puzzled by a bountiful identities

The underwear comes in brief and trunk styles, each in pouch front or flat front; plus a “bralette”, which appears to be an entirely cloth bra. In six colors: a dusky red called bare and five pastels, labeled blush, buff, bone, lilac, jade. Here’s a sampling of items available in lilac”:

(#5) bralette, flat brief, pouch brief, pouch trunk

And finally, a note on queer and genderqueer actor Tommy Dorfman, as a representative of the Boy Smells company, from Wikipedia:

Tommy Dorfman (born May 13, 1992) is an American actor known for playing the role of Ryan Shaver in the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why (2017).

… Dorfman is queer. Dorfman and Peter Zurkuhlen became engaged in April 2015 and were married in Portland, Maine, on November 12, 2016.

In November 2017, Dorfman came out as non-binary, and later changed their pronouns to they/them.

Yesterday was actual Stonewall Day, honoring the riots at the Stonewall Inn on that date in 1969 and serving as a flashpoint for Gay Pride events and political organizations — and, increasingly over the years, providing a hook for all manner of LGBT-oriented commerce (products for sale, advertising for those products) and feel-good publicity for companies and organizations of all sorts. On darker days, I get the feeling that queerfolk are just being used: rainbow everything, whether or not it has some plausible connection to gender or sexuality. I am myself far from immune to the allure of random rainbow objects.

Some items of apparel, however, are naturals for the rainbow treatment — for gay men, items worn in male athletic activities or associated with male sexual bodyparts (or in the case of jockstraps, both).

As it happens, athletic / running / fitness / exercise / gym shorts are a long-standing item in my clothes drawers: worn for doing exercises at the Y (when I could still manage that), as everyday indoor wear at home, and during the summer as comfortable outdoor wear as well. I’ve been accustomed to using gray cotton shorts (comfortable and cheap, also unremarkable), like these from ROMWE.com:

(#1)

But there are more interesting options.

Penguin Pete. From my 6/11 posting “Original Penguin Pride”, on this ad:

(#2) ORIGINAL PENGUIN: A FULL LIFESTYLE CLOTHING BRAND (from Munsingwear, featuring the Munsingwear penguin mascot, Pete): a rainbow-stripe tank top and what I saw as gym shorts with little rainbow penguins sashaying across it

The company also offers a t-shirt with those sashaying rainbow penguins:

(#3)

Then, on 6/22, Aric Olnes posted on Facebook about the bottom garment in #2:

(#3) Rainbow Pete Logo-Print 3″ Swim Trunks

My response on 6/27 on Facebook:

Delightful pattern. But — modified rapture — the Original Penguin line offers a rainbow penguin swimsuit (where the underwear and the outerwear come as a package), but not rainbow penguin shorts (outerwear alone, to be worn with underwear that can be regularly changed; there are good reasons for underpants as a separate garment). My custom in the summer is to wear athletic shorts as everyday wear — so far, just standard gray cotton gymwear (I know, how butch), just because it’s comfortable, very easy to get, and not especially expensive, but I’d be happy to branch out some. But not only doesn’t Munsingwear offer rainbow penguin shorts, athletic or otherwise, nobody else does either; you can get rainbow shorts in many patterns, and some (non-rainbow) penguin shorts, but not (as far as I can see) rainbow penguin shorts. (I assume Munsingwear holds the legal rights to the pattern.) Grrr.

Since I’m into penguins as well as gaywear, I feel the (apparent) unavailability of rainbow penguin athletic shorts keenly.

Ultras Sportswear. But penguinless rainbow athletic shorts are certainly available. Notably this item from Ultras Sportswear:

(#4) Athletic / running / fitness / exercise / gym shorts in bold horizontal rainbow stripes, of “athletic microfiber”, with side pockets, with a 7-inch (also available in 2.5-inch) inseam

This is not some special item designed specifically for the Pride market; the Ultras company makes garments in patterns for most occasions, most countries, and every U.S. state, plus plain patterns in a wide variety of colors. #4 has the Pride pattern; here’s the screaming Swiss pattern:

(#5)

Note on microfiber: a mostly polyester, part polyamide fabric that is very soft and highly absorbent; it’s used especially for sweat-absorbent gym towels

Soon I will have some more colorful gym shorts, to vary my traditional plain gray.

Ultimately, about the (semi-technical, commercial) categories of the clothing industries: named types of Xwear that mostly lack labels in everyday language. (Parallel in many ways to the categories of the household supplies industries, with named types of Xware.) But first:

On my Facebook feed yesterday, this ad for men’s lounge shorts (a type of outerwear) from the Nice Laundry company:

(#1) “The Palms Lounge Short”; from their ad: “The most comfortable lounge shorts ever featuring 4-way stretch nylon with soft Micromodal® interior. Made in the shade.”

— which caught my eye for two reasons. First, the label lounge short (with the commercial singular usage; from other companies, lounge shorts, with the everyday plural usage); I didn’t recall having previously experienced lounge as a modifier naming a type of short(s) before. Second, the gorgeous pattern (of palm fronds), rivaling some gorgeous floral patterns for men’s underwear — briefs, boxers, jockstraps — that had been appearing on my Facebook page recently. (As for colors, the Nice Laundry company offers lounge shorts in everything from the plainest of solid black and navy blue through various more arresting solid colors and patterns to the palms.)

The larger category embracing lounge short(s) is labeled loungewear, and is defined in the NOAD entry by in the NOAD entry:

noun loungewear: casual, comfortable clothing [specifically, outerwear] suitable for wearing at home.

— a compound with first element lounge:

verb lounge: [no object, with adverbial of place] lie, sit, or stand in a relaxed or lazy way: several students were lounging about reading papers.

As for function, loungewear is designed for particular occasions of use (informal occasions, especially at home, alone or in the company of others); and to afford properties desired by wearers (providing comfort, via light weight and freedom from restriction, while protecting the wearer’s modesty: the fabric is opaque, and loungewear bottoms for men — lounge shorts and lounge pants — have no flies).

Like athletic / running / fitness / exercise / gym shorts — see my 6/29 posting “Rainbows and penguins at the gym” — lounge shorts (and lounge pants) are beltless, supplied instead with elastic waistbands or drawstrings (more formal shorts, with belts, are streetwear). Unlike gym shorts (which are customarily worn with briefs or a jockstrap as underwear, however, it seems that lounge shorts are worn without (constricting and bulky) underwear: to get the advantages of lounge shorts, guys sacrifice the advantages of underwear (protecting their private parts from the world and the world from their private parts) and go commando. (Or so it seems; underwear is neither mentioned nor depicted in material on lounge shorts. Since the item is unfamiliar to me — I lounge at home in gym shorts, and wear them as informal streetwear in warm weather as well — I could use some first-hand reports on the customs of men’s lounge shorts from users.)

Three examples. Illustrating some of the variety.

Nice Laundry. Illustrated above. On the alternatives available:

6″ pocket lounge short  – in black, navy blue, burgundy, grey, marble, palms, tiger stripe camo, fun short (half light blue, half light yellow)

also a 4″ pocket lounge short in various colors; and a 4″ without pocket. On the latter: “Substantial enough to lounge around in, sleek enough to wear as a boxer. Go to work, walk the dog and lounge all night in these. No pockets for sleek profile.” (So, usable as a fly-less boxer.)

Patagonia. The company treats its Baggies shorts mostly as sportswear but also advertises them as lounge shorts. From its website on Baggies, advertising its material: “lightweight yet durable 100% recycled nylon”. Patagonia advertises them in a range of intense colors and in some patterns, including the handsome Hevea Leaves: Superior Blue (men’s 5″):

(#2) (Hevea brasiliensis is the rubber tree)

Lands’ End. The company treats its lounge shorts as another way of using its “sleep shorts” / pajama shorts. From its website:

It’s tough to beat the comfort of pure cotton jersey. So we didn’t even try. These jersey sleep shorts are as comfortable as they are handsome, with 100% ringspun combed cotton that’s sueded for extra softness.

They offer the shorts in only three colors — navy, charcoal, hazy blue — with an 8″ inseam, two front pockets, and one back pocket. Here they are in hazy blue:

(#3)

Labels of commerce: Xware and Xwear. Note the profusion of apparel types with semi-technical commercial labels in –wear (alluding to the function of the garments): loungewear, sleepwear, gymwear, sportswear, outerwear, and so on. (Underwear is, exceptionally, a long-standing piece of everyday vocabulary.) The usage has been extended to fetishwear and, in my writing on underwear aimed at a gay male audience, to homowear (referring to underwear designed to display the male body for the pleasure and arousal of this audience).

This terminological move echoes a similar move for categories of artefacts in the domain of food preparation and consumption — categories with Xware names. From my 5/28/11 posting “Dishes”:

From a Language Log posting of mine from several years ago on “commercial categories”:

“Unlabeled” categories — those that have no relatively brief, conventionalized, everyday, widely used labels that are not just descriptions or enumerations of the things within the categories — are incredibly common, much more common than most people imagine. They are all over the place in domains of meaning that have to do with social groups and relationships and with cultural artefacts of all sorts. But there are contexts in which people want to tap into those unlabeled categories. So they label them [with “semi-technical terms”].

One such context is commerce: in reference to these categories in advertisements, catalogues, directories of goods and services, department designations in stores, and the like. This is what has brought us flatware (or, for some people [note: some people], silverware, regardless of actual silver content, and excluding many items made of silver) for knives, forks, spoons, and serving implements; dinnerware (or, for some people, china, regardless of the constituent material) for plates, bowls, cups, etc. (attempts to describe the referents of such terms tend to trail off into “etc.”); glassware (or drinkware) for glasses of all sorts (glass itself referring usually only to the central members of the category, with wine glasses, martini glasses, champagne flutes, shot glasses, etc. all treated as special cases; glass on its own normally refers to a specific range of types of drinking glasses); tableware for a category that embraces flatware, dinnerware, glassware, and some other items; cookware for, very roughly, pots and pans; bed and bath for yet another category; and housewares for tableware, cookware, kitchen accessories, small appliances, bed and bath, and more, all taken together.

(Cookware takes in pots and pans plus ladles, tongs, whisks, colanders, sieves, graters, and much more.)

Entertainingly, in addition to homowear, there’s a Homoware. From the travelgay site about Homoware:

Gay lifestyle shop in Copenhagen, that sells sex toys, lubes (the largest collection in Scandinavia, apparently), condoms, underwear, fetish gear and lots of accessories.