What Lies Beneath: Thoughts on Men's Underpants

CSMF 1 (2) pp. 133–145 Intellect Limited 2014 Critical Studies in Men’s Fashion Volume 1 Number 2 © 2014 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/csmf.1.2.133_1 Prudence BlacK and Michael carter University of Sydney Karen de Perthuis and alison Gill University of Western Sydney what lies beneath? thoughts on men’s underpants aBstract Keywords This article consists of a number of thoughts about and meditations on men’s underpants. Beginning with a ‘day in the life’ of a standard pair of underpants, it moves on to explore some of the specific characteristics that accompany the wearing of this particular garment. There follows a consideration of the role played by underpants in the creation of male characters for screen and television. A brief look at Homer Simpson’s Y-fronts is followed by the examination of a crucial moment in the history of Australian undergarments, namely the move from wool to cotton as the chief material of their manufacture. After an exploration of the humour that is often associated with men’s underpants the article finishes with a series of recollections that show how undergarments can be folded into the most intimate of memories. men’s underpants advertisements intimacy eroticism humour wearing introduction Four authors, each with something different to say about men’s underwear, came together to put their diverse contributions into a broad order: on wearing; the personal; the historical; and the domestic. Naturally, with garments so intimate and private in nature, what the authors had to say varied considerably. But however much the following meditations vary from one another, they are all responses to the question found in the title, ‘what lies beneath?’ 133 Prudence Black | Michael Carter | Karen de Perthuis … And so, beginning with a ‘day in the life’ of a standard pair of underpants, the article moves on to explore how the characteristics that accompany the wearing of this particular garment are rendered public. There follows a consideration of the role played by underpants in the creation of male characters for screen and television. A brief look at Homer Simpson’s Y-fronts is followed by the examination of a moment in the history of Australian undergarments, namely the move from wool to cotton as the chief material of their manufacture. After an exploration of the humour that is often associated with men’s underpants the article finishes with a series of recollections that show how undergarments can be folded into the most intimate of memories. the aBject Each day a miniature drama of the excremental gets played out when we dress and undress. Compare the state of our underpants as we pull them on in the morning. Gliding up towards us is a clean, smooth, spotless surface. Soon after, we experience a deeply satisfying feeling as the garment fits itself perfectly to the contours of our bodies. What a difference there is when we take them off at the end of the day. As they travel downward and become the victims of gravity we may catch a glimpse of a greatly transformed interior. They reveal themselves as diaries recording the traces of our daily intestinal events. Sagging pitifully, they finally hit the floor, soiled, abject, no longer attached to the body they had felt so much a part of. renderinG PuBlic What is it that men are doing in/with underwear? As a female observer, the opportunities for apprehending the doings – that is, the practices around male underwear (referred to here as underwearing) – are via speculation on routine practices and observations about public displays. The hunch is that the latter is the best shot I have at this question concerning practices that contend with visibility and the strata of dress. The potential range of masculine expression and competency performed in underwear are literally concealed by the more visible, outer layers of clothing, and the requirements to uphold the external character of dress. As dressing is a practice of layering, such expressions of humour, eroticism, intimacy, volatility, strength, routine and disinterest in underclothes are enclosed as intermediate states of dress. If Dress Studies is in part the investigation of changing social conventions of dress, this question of underwearing has to consider these transitional states of dressing as not the exposure or removal of convention, but rather conventions of undress. Such a line of enquiry could include researching first-hand accounts of dressing to lay bare banal, recondite experiences. This suggests a research project of domestic ethnography because of the manner in which this first layer of dressing is relegated to the background, frequently forgotten precisely because it typically lies underneath everything else. One has to make explicit opportunities to reflect on the daily practice of dressing, of routinely selecting and stepping into underpants, to probe the roles played out in this garment, and others that take its place, during a day, a week, a month, a year. In between these moments of dressing that top and tail a day, one’s own underwear may be summarily forgotten until a breakdown of utilitarian duty foregrounds their place as lining, cover, support and foundation to many activities. Yet, revelatory gestures of exposure – deliberate or otherwise – remind us of underwearing on others. The bemusing young male display that reached its zenith in the early 2000s of 134 What lies beneath? unbelted jeans worn very low, below the ass to reveal the branded waistband, the jocks and most of the covered bum cheeks, raises interesting questions about emerging collective conventions of underwearing and undress. More widespread, there is the matter of the way underwear advertisements – quite uneven in scale including large outdoor billboards, print advertising in magazines, television and Internet advertising – depict underwearing for the public, visual record, and contribute to a social discourse about masculine undress. Predictably, the setting and contextual story for the modelling of underwear plays a key part of the construction of such conventions, working within the correlation between outerwear/underwear with a dichotomy about accepted public (visible dress) and private behaviours (invisible undress). Calvin Klein’s 1992 iconic campaign used fledgling celebrity Mark Wahlberg (then known by his rapper name ‘Marky Mark’) in boxer briefs, featured against a neutral studio backdrop to presumably throw into relief Wahlberg’s hyper-built, hairless, chiselled body and his briefs. If the intention was to impress with Mark’s street attitude and self-admiration for what he packages in his hands, then the de-contextualization of the space (neither a decidedly public nor a private setting) was a deliberate ploy to confirm a sexualized confidence as a convention of undress, untethered from the mirror and the bedroom, and moving its way towards the public domain. When scaled-up for outdoor billboards, Calvin Klein’s images of Wahlberg and Kate Moss became a memorable photographic benchmark of erotic steaminess in underwear marketing and its spectatorship as a-not-to-be missed outdoor recreation. Recent marketing that models a more approachable man, labelled the ‘Less ab, more flab’ trend by Eric Wilson (2013), and represented by campaigns like those of the lackadaisically named MeUndies or Mack Weldon, are said to be a reaction to abs fatigue because they depict so-called everyday settings of men (un-)dressing. In no manner less staged than prior approaches where the abs are central and primed for full view, a 2012–2013 MeUndies advertisement depicts a male model with a female companion, sitting on a street bench, in the midst of removing their trousers to reveal they are wearing underpants (both models still wear shirts, so all abs are covered). In a neat street-side setting, with a black car passing behind them, the scenario is a combination of unlikely, ordinary and unexpected, as it confirms that in everyday life, one probably should have one’s underwear ready to go public at any moment. Its quirky humour and surprise relies on underwear to be normally ordinary, foundational, and mostly, to be only unexpectedly visible in an outdoor setting that lacks a clear scenario of erotic intention. In so far as these examples assist to constitute a visual record of various doings of underwear, they work within the correlation between outerwear/underwear (visible dress/invisible undress) and accepted notions of public and private behaviours, in order to construct messages of eroticism or alternatively surprise, along fairly predictable lines. the erotic In their History of Underclothes, C. Willett and Phillis Cunnington (1951) highlight two dimensions to men’s and women’s undergarments somewhat different from their more utilitarian functions. Alongside such uses as protection, warmth and cleanliness, they also include two strands of eroticism at work in the garments. The first is the association of underclothes, ‘often to a pathological extent’ (1951: 11), with erotic impulses (one assumes, that here, they are referring to men). The second involves repressive disturbances where 135 Prudence Black | Michael Carter | Karen de Perthuis … ‘writers have hesitated to expand on a topic which might suggest that their interest’ is of a pathological nature (1951: 11). These sources of trouble are capable of disrupting and undermining the critical distance essential for any serious intellectual work to commence. Indeed, they could seriously unsettle the analytical equanimity so essential to the work of the scholar. what lies Beneath I know more about men’s underpants than I probably should. I certainly know more about them than the men I buy underpants for. Mostly, these men are strangers – actors, models, musicians – and, despite a waist measurement being all I need, many cannot say what size they take, so they refer me to their agent. Or else they lie. There’s no particular logic behind this vanitydriven misinformation. Small, Medium, Large, X-Large. Unlike the cup-size of women’s bras, the sizing of men’s underpants usually has little to do with what goes inside. In my work as a costume designer and stylist, I do not shop by brand and consciously avoid billboard waistbands that proclaim who made them (too distracting on-screen). But I am aware of the possibilities on offer. Some brands ‘enhance’, others go for comfort; most want to be ‘hot’, even if it is not clear for whom. In underwear advertising campaigns, brands might make some effort to carve out a niche by appealing to different masculine types, but when it comes to the packaging of briefs and trunks that are lined up in department store displays, there is only one kind of man – and he is heroic. Bronzed skin stretches across a gym-fed body with an armour-plate chest and powerful shoulders; a sculpted abdomen, slim hips and muscled thighs all frame a compelling, but indeterminate, bulge. The men I work with do not look like this. They turn up in their own underwear – tired, fresh or none at all – and get changed into the clothes that they are given with little care for modesty. Occasionally, someone will be wearing women’s knickers, or even pantyhose, the latter explained away as providing the convenience of undies and socks in one. If they are very young, polyester satin boxers with cartoon prints are popular, but otherwise the range of briefs, boxers and trunks is pretty unremarkable. There are practical reasons why I supply these men with underwear. Maybe the character in the role they are playing falls fully clothed into water and they need a dry set for each take. Maybe their costume is a skin-tight rubber suit, and capacious, flapping boxers will spoil the line. Brightly coloured briefs under white pants need to be replaced with skin-coloured tones; and dancers, athletes and stuntmen require jock straps or protective shields. Or maybe the actor is in a scene where the character is half dressed and his underwear is the costume. In such cases, there are underpants that are ‘right’ and underpants that are ‘wrong’. Purple, saggy Jockey briefs? Or crisp white boxers? While the rule of thumb is consistency between outer and inner layers, sometimes dissonance between the public and private self will reveal more about a character. Just as in real life, the choice of underpants can say more about a man than the garments he chooses to show the world. As the first layer of an actor’s costume, there is attached to underwear the symbolism of starting anew. Stripped down to nothing, naked in his trailer or change-room, he pulls on the foundation garment that supports – literally and metaphorically – the sometimes-magical process of transformation that is one of the functions of an actor’s costume. This means there are times when 136 What lies beneath? the provision of underwear is for the sole benefit of the wearer, one of those things costume designers give actors to help construct a character. Like the keys you put in a pocket, or the photograph in a wallet, it is something to help an actor ‘feel a certain thing’. The designer of The Untouchables (De Palma, 1987) did this when she created Robert de Niro’s costume for his role as Al Capone. Throughout the film, de Niro/Capone wears immaculately tailored suits. He appears once in his pyjamas, but otherwise is never less than fully clothed. Yet his costume included a drawer of bespoke, silk boxer shorts, monogrammed with the gangster’s initials (Kolson 1986). This was a detail that the audience would never see, but part extravagant gesture, part ‘method dressing’, it helped the actor into the part. When you’re Al Capone, what lies beneath matters. efficiency The Y-fronts worn by Homer Simpson during his moments of domestic relaxation are somewhat odd. They seem to evade the conventional presentation of men’s underpants as either comic, sexual or heroic. His Y-fronts are ‘quiet’. No creases or folds are visible; in fact there is no evidence of the disruptive forces that may be in motion beneath the inverted Y. Homer has retreated into the privacy and comforts of home where a more lenient dress regime holds sway. The domestic sphere is the place where the ‘machinery’ that enables the public face of the family to be maintained is to be found. It is a place ‘behind-the-scenes’, and it is here that the furniture of daily life is assembled prior to the curtain being raised. Homer can discard portions of his visible dress, which allows us to see part of the sartorial support team at work beneath his outer garments. From this perspective the Y could be a kind of scaffolding underpinning his public attire. Homer’s Y-fronts, like the wider situation in which he is placed, are garments that belong to the region behind the demands of the public sphere. They assume a form, a sort of functional foundation that exists ‘before’ any of the more tempestuous scenes that are played out around this item of male underwear make an appearance. His Y-fronts are neither erotic, humorous, nor heroic. Instead, what we see within the Y is efficiency. a duty of care In 1948 the French brand Erby advertised a men’s brief called ‘Slip Kangourou’. The illustrated advertisement for the brief displayed a muscled, blond-headed man with quiff, posing in white briefs on the beach with a bevy of bikiniclad women draped on the sand in the background. Alongside the man is a kangaroo of the same height wearing matching briefs. The caption below the illustration reads ‘Le seul normal par sa conception’/‘The only one normal by design’ (see Figure 1). Playing on the idea of the Australian marsupial’s natural pouch, the new brief featured a pocket-like support. This brief was a derivation of the more popular inverted Y shape, a feature that includes a hidden opening to allow quick and easy access to the penis. Y-fronts first appeared as part of an underwear range late in 1935, in the same year the American company Coopers had introduced the ‘new French Jockey short’. Coopers had been manufacturing men’s underwear since 1898, but this new design had come about for a number of reasons: changing ideas about men’s health, new fabrics and technologies and a slimmer more athletic male ‘ideal’. Y-fronts and the 137 Prudence Black | Michael Carter | Karen de Perthuis … Figure 1. Erby Advertisement. c 1948. Private Collection. pouch were initially seen as providing a ‘masculine support’ though a double layer of fabric. Described in 1941 in an advertisement for Lyle and Scott Ltd (who were the manufacturers and distributors of Coopers in Scotland), the new Y-front briefs were seen to have a number of features as ‘the result of a scientific approach to this age old problem of man’s underwear’ (Anon. 1941). The following four points relate to the importance of each feature of the new design: •฀ No buttons – no loose tapes, no ironing – knitted fabric absorbs perspiration •฀ Patent Y-front crotch – no gaping front •฀ Direct tension gives masculine support •฀ Styled perfectly to fit the figure. 138 What lies beneath? Each of these features was seen as innovative and as a key selling point in relation to the new garment. One of the features of the new briefs was the fact they were now being made in cotton, replacing the woollen garments of the earlier part of the century. The brief was made using Lastex yarn at the waist, and fine cotton was used as the main fabric in the scientifically designed underwear (Anon. 1950). The issue of the material used in making underwear has a long history. Going back a step and moving once again to Australia, on the 10 October 1918 Jaeger, manufacturers of ‘fine pure wool underwear’ had placed an advertisement in the Launceston Examiner in Tasmania: Many a Man is Hot and Irritable because his underwear isn’t comfortable – he does not realise the cause of the trouble is unhealthy underwear. Jaeger – Fine Pure Wool Underwear – guarantees to men an even temperature and cool body. Being all pure wool, it absorbs perspiration readily in summer, while in winter it keeps the body cosy, strong and comfortable. (Anon. 1918) Rather than fashionable considerations about underwear, it was the qualities of the cloth from which the underwear was made that was the main selling point. In Australia, it formed part of a larger argument about supporting the wool or the newly developed cotton industry. Bonds, which would become an iconic brand in Australia for their men’s, women’s and children’s underwear, placed high values on their business and their customers. From the very early years the brand was attached to celebrities. For example, that Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm were wearing Bonds underwear when they made the first trans-Pacific flight (from California to Brisbane) in 1928 was much publicized. The following article may well have been written anticipating their forthcoming journey: Bonds are often as light as gossamer, yet enduring as steel …. Australians, whatever their faults, are always quick to appreciate merit, whether in a man or a material. They have a talent, amounting almost to genius, of unerringly choosing the best. (Anon. 1927) In their quest to provide the latest fashion in styles and their use of fabrics, Bonds helped create the move from woollen fabrics to the more versatile and modern cotton. This was not without some criticism: Cheap cotton goods have supplanted woollen underwear, especially among the poorer classes. It was suggested that there should be a tariff on raw cotton imported for purposes other than spinning. R. N. McLean, general manager of Bonds, supported a duty on raw cotton, believing the Australian raw material coming mostly from Queensland suited their purposes. (Anon. 1928) Another of the early companies in Australia making underwear was Davies Coop & Co. The company had begun manufacturing shirts in 1925 in Lonsdale Street, Melbourne, but due to the growth of protection as part of 139 Prudence Black | Michael Carter | Karen de Perthuis … the fiscal policy of Australia, the company realized the conditions were right for expansion and set up business in Adelaide making men’s, women’s and children’s underwear under the ‘Exacto’ brand. By 1939 it was manufacturing general underwear at the rate of 3,000,000 garments annually for a population of almost seven million (Anon. 1939). This company also made a point of highlighting the technology and the Exacto label’s use of cotton: The X-treated process is a mechanical process developed to prevent shrinkage – no chemicals are involved so Exacto cotton interlock underwear retains the wonderful advantage of ‘cotton next to skin’. (Anon. 1968) Eagley was a company that was established in 1907 to make woollen underwear, and they described themselves as providing a ‘protective service to thousands of Australian men, women and children’ (Anon. 1932). One of their advertisements shows an illustration of a man in a button-down singlet and button-through underpants, and wearing socks, slippers and a dressinggown. Eagley espoused the qualities of wool as maintaining an even bodily warmth and providing the ‘only certain guard against the treachery of winter’s variable climate’ (Anon. 1932). Also, woollen garments would keep the body evenly and comfortably warm, providing a certain bulwark against the danger of winter ailments and infection. And as it is the middle of wartime the prices of ‘Eagley’ and ‘Yelga’ products have been substantially reduced to meet present economic conditions (Anon. 1932). By 1951 Eagley was making men’s underwear out of long-fibre Egyptian cotton but they still retained their ‘Nevashrink’ woollen underwear label (a registered brand from 1940) which, through a new process, fine merino wool was rendered unshrinkable (Anon. 1940a, 1940b). Their men’s underpants of the time included the ‘balloon seated trunks’, which featured an insert of fabric in the rear allowed for movement if the fabric was not stretchy (Anon. 1951). In 1936 men’s underpants became part of a landmark case, Grant vs The Australian Knitting Mills (Holeproof took over Australian Knitting Mills in 1955). The plaintiff, Dr Grant, from Adelaide, South Australia, contracted dermatitis as a result of wearing woollen underpants, claiming they had been manufactured with an excess of sulphite. He wore them for one week without washing them. He won the case, the court deciding the manufacturer owed a duty of care to the consumer. huMour Tucked away in the Anglo-Saxon tradition of broad comedy is a minor strand of humour where male underwear is a regular source of laughter. This comic effect has largely evaporated as these garments have changed shape at the hands of the advertising industry, becoming reconfigured as something seriously erotic. (A good rule of thumb here is, the baggier the underpants, the funnier they are.) But no matter how strong the advertiser’s desire to transform these underpants into something wholly erotic, vestiges of the former meanings remain. As hard as they tried to bring about a total reformation of these garments and, of course, what it is that they ‘support’, some things would just not succumb to marketing re-alignments. So why were, and maybe still are, items of men’s underwear amusing? 140 What lies beneath? Amusement attaches only to those garments worn below the waist, that is, to underpants. Items such as a singletor T-shirtare bereft of any such humorous charge. In fact, they have been a persistent source of the erotic rather than the comic. A common way of advertising garments from the upper part of the male body and, at the same time imparting to the man an erotic aura, is to display them in the act of being removed by the male model. What then are we laughing at? The fact that all the action is to do with the region below the waist suggests that the source of the comic resides, in some way, in the relation between underpants and the male genitals, in particular the penis. This penis is a ‘phantom’ entity, not a real one. It is a phantom, or imaginary, penis because of the interdiction on the real penis making an appearance. The real penis exists as a threat, a source of anxiety, rather than a physical reality. The phantom penis, by contrast, is equipped with abilities quite different to the biological one. In this instance, it is mobile and so able to break free from its physical and biological coordinates. So the removal of one’s underpants can also be an imaginary detachment of the mobile, phantom penis. This may account for the fact that these garments can be comical even when they are no longer attached to a body. Humour resides in the way in which the underpants obscure the presence of the (phantom) penis while at the same time teetering on the edge of revealing it. If the ‘real’ penis, and its threat to make an appearance were realized, the phantom penis would be transformed into the real penis and the comic spell would be broken. (This is no laughing matter.) Likewise, if there is no suggestion of the presence of the penis, and so no chance of any kind of revelation taking place, then the comic will, once again, be absent. Revelation, through the removal of the garment, is the most obviously funny element in the network of laughs that surround men’s underpants. But the laughs would quickly cease if the interdiction against seeing the penis were broken. Pulling on a pair of underpants is never as comical as taking them off. Indeed obscuring the genitals might produce a feeling of relief in both the wearer and the observer. So, once again, we should ask what is it that we are laughing at? Or better still, what is it that is making us laugh? It would seem that the humour we are looking for is to be found in the penis and the ways in which men’s underpants can obscure it but, at the same time, ‘encourage’ its appearance. Male underpants are a place where two opposing emotions are in play: anxiety that the ‘real’ penis may make an appearance and relief that it remains obscured. Laughter thus serves two masters, anxiety and relief. intiMacy It is the winter of 2010. I am in the men’s underwear department of David Jones buying underpants for someone whose body I know almost as well as my own. The process of comparing different styles and different fabrics, choosing and paying, feels less like a transaction than an act of healing. I am buying his underwear because he is in hospital and may never come out. I am buying his underwear because the cocktail of drugs and the poison of chemotherapy have left the delicate skin of his buttocks red and excoriated. Cancer has made his belly and legs swell with oedema and anything vaguely tight or scratchy causes discomfort, so he needs fabric that is loose and fine. He needs underpants made from the same sort of fabric as a favourite old T-shirt that has gone silky soft with wear. When he was first admitted back in summer, it was a short stay. He wore boxers and a hospital gown left open down the back to accommodate the 141 Prudence Black | Michael Carter | Karen de Perthuis … tubes and needles that pierced his lungs. In hospital, any sense of privacy goes very quickly; and as he sat cross-legged on the bed, revealing more than he ought, I surreptitiously re-arranged the sheet over his legs so that he looked ‘decent’ for nurses and visitors. Years before, a different flash of skin had caught my eye – a smooth bronzed wedge that appeared between the top of his jeans and the bottom of his T-shirt as he lifted his arm. Taken completely by surprise, this ‘intermittence of skin flashing between two articles of clothing… between two edges’ seduced me, exactly as Roland Barthes has described (1975: 10). Yes, the ‘most erotic portion of a body [is] where the garment gapes’ (1975: 9, original emphasis); it is the ‘flash itself which seduces’ (1975: 10). But not this sort of flash. Not the sort of flash that happens in hospital beds. The vulnerability of such accidental exposure is too raw, the flesh too fragile, to have gained a respectable place in the discourse of erotica. Unlike women’s underwear, which is often lacy or sheer, the flirtatious, teasing ‘staging of an appearance-as-disappearance’ that Barthes (1975: 10) suggests is the essence of the erotic is not woven into the notion of conventional men’s underwear. Concealing instead of revealing, it is suggestive in other ways, ways that relate to bulk and power, specifically, the bulging package of cock and balls, which are never fully defined. This, at least, is the tactic of men’s underwear advertising: sex is explicit; what lies beneath implied. For it to be otherwise would be to defeat the purpose of the advertisement; to expose the cause of the bulge would edge the image away from erotica and into the category of pornography, thus deflating the tantalizing state of unfulfilled desire that is both advertiser’s tool and the core of all longing. The image of a woman in lingerie and high heels is a cliché with undiminished erotic power. A man wearing only underpants, shoes and socks is comic. Aware of this effect, he would strut around the bedroom, glasses perched on nose, belly puffed-out, undies pulled up high around his waist. This was before he was sick, back when he surfed every day, when the bloated belly was fake, and impromptu sex on the kitchen floor was just something you did. It changed overnight. The kitchen reverted to a place for cooking and eating. Sex became a memory. The drugs made him ravenous and I was always behind the stove or at the bench top, preparing the latest miracle something. Every dish included chilli, garlic and onion for their magical healing properties. Being ill, he made no effort to help, but hovered, pinching bits and pieces before they were done. On a particularly warm night, he wandered around in his boxer shorts, reading glasses and new big belly, a moustache made from two large red chillies stuck to his upper lip. Strutting around until I noticed. With him in hospital for weeks at a time, I brought his clothes home to wash and dry in the sun. Faced with a pile of underwear on the bed, I folded these garments that had been so close to his skin. They were not loose and floppy; they had his shape, the fabric moulded to the memory of his buttocks, his cock, his balls. As I traced the remembered intimacies of his body with my hand, longing overwhelmed me. It was as close to a sexual act as folding clothes can be. conclusion We do not, as a rule, share underpants. With their proximity to the intimate folds of the body and their inexorable decline into the abject, they occupy a realm one notch above the toothbrush. Although sharing the writing of a 142 What lies beneath? scholarly article does not entail the same complications as sharing a pair of underpants, it is not without its own issues of trust, its own moments of shame or hesitation at the possibility of over-sharing. As authors, we have touched upon male bodies and masculine ideals, practices of wearing – both performative and banal – recent and archival advertisements and design history, and have also identified some of the conflicting responses – laughter, anxiety, desire – that underpants can evoke. To no small degree, we have done this by drawing on anecdotal and personal reflection. In adopting this methodological approach, we recognize that there are risks, not least of which might be the collapsing of the critical distance expected of analytical enquiry. Nonetheless, this approach is undertaken in the belief that the intrusions of the personal, the autobiographical and the anecdotal can be productive in acknowledging the troubling aspects that are attached to these most intimate of garments. The point is not to come to a conclusion, nor to close off enquiry; each of these meditations, each little story, has a strand worth pursuing. The hope is that this collaborative effort reflects the wonderful complexity of men’s underpants. So, what lies beneath? Would any other garment offer this richness of narrative possibilities? What becomes clear is that underpants occupy a number of different modalities or ‘lives’ – representation, commodity or personal garment – as they cross the spheres of public and private, visible and invisible, outer and under wear. As an image in advertising or packaged as box-fresh garment, underpants are highlighted through display. As worn garment, they belong to someone and, attached to one body, they become hidden, invisible and private. During the process of transition from representation to personal garment, what emerges is a shift in the relationship between the garment and the body. In representation (in advertisements, on packaging), the body is at the service of the underpants; but worn, underpants serve the body, whether as functional (supportive, enhancing, warm in winter, cool in summer), fashionable or aesthetically pleasing. However, entering the realm of the personal does not always signal the end of public display. Exposure – deliberate or otherwise – occurs in everyday domestic scenarios, as well as in performances on the street, stage or screen. Because underpants are conventionally hidden, in such instances they are more revealing of self and character than those outer garments that we have no choice in displaying to the world. Finally, this leads us to the point of undressing and the exposure of that which remains private and unseen – the biological, physical male body, the sexual organs. This is far from simple terrain. Here, we find secrecy, dissembling and disappointment; private behaviours of ritual and routine; and the vestiges of powerful emotions – evocations of lust, memory, intimacy, desire and something of what lies beneath. acKnowledGeMents The authors would like to thank Shaun Cole and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and useful suggestions. references Anon. (1918), ‘Jaeger (fine pure wool underwear)’, advertisement, The Examiner, 10 October, p. 2. —— (1927), ‘Pleasing “Bonds”: Remarkable company’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 8 February, p. 8. 143 Prudence Black | Michael Carter | Karen de Perthuis … —— (1928), ‘Cotton goods’ growing popularity tariff inquiry’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 31 October, p. 12. —— (1932), ‘Warm comfort and winter safety’, advertisement, The Argus, 20 April, p. 15. —— (1939), ‘Factory at Woodville will link state with cotton industry’, The Mail, 6 May, p. 3. —— (1940), ‘Buckley’s make a first presentation of Nevashrink’, advertisement, The Argus, 31 May, p. 3. —— (1940), ‘At last shrink proof all-wool underwear’, advertisement, The Argus, 17 May, p. 5. —— (1941), ‘Coopers Y-front underwear’, advertisement, http://melindaschwakhofer.wordpress.com/2011/07/13/y-front-wednesday/. Accessed 2 October 2013. —— (1950), ‘The underwear for a man!’, advertisement, http://www. historyworld.co.uk/advert.php?id=458&offset=125&sort=0&l1=fashion+ %26+clothing&l2=. Accessed 2 October 2013. —— (1951), ‘Change to Kool for a cool change…’, advertisement, The Australian Women’s Weekly, 17 October, p. 4. —— (1968), ‘Don’t tolerate shrinkage the truth comes out in the wash!’, advertisement, The Canberra Times, 24 May, p. 7. Barthes, R. (1975), The Pleasure of the Text (trans. R. Miller), New York: Hill and Wang. Cunnington, C. W. and Cunnington, P. (1951), The History of Underclothes, London: Michael Joseph. De Palma, Brian (1987), The Untouchables, Los Angeles: Paramount Pictures. Kolson, A. (1986), ‘De Niro is Capone down to the underwear in untouchables film’, Ottawa Citizen, 30 December, http://news.google.com/ne wspapers?nid=2194&dat=19861230&id=FdIyAAAAIBAJ&sjid=a-8FAAAAIBAJ&pg=1413,3240656. Accessed 18 June 2013. Wilson, E. (2013), ‘Less ab, more flab’, New York Times, 22 May, http:// www.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/fashion/changes-in-the-marketing-ofmens-underwear.html. Accessed 6 June 2013. suGGested citation Black, P., Carter, M., de Perthuis, K. and Gill, A. (2014), ‘What lies beneath? Thoughts on men’s underpants’, Critical Studies in Men’s Fashion 1: 2, pp. 133–145, doi: 10.1386/csmf.1.2.133_1 contriButor details Prudence Black is an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. She has published in the areas of design, fashion and popular culture, and is the author of The Flight Attendant’s Shoe. Contact: Department of Gender and Cultural Studies, School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry, Faculty of Arts, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia. E-mail: prudence.black@sydney.edu.au Michael Carter is an Honorary Associate of the Department of Art History and Film Studies within the University of Sydney. He is the author of Fashion 144 What lies beneath? Classics from Carlyle to Barthes, was a co-editor with Andy Stafford of the Roland Barthes anthology, The Language of Fashion and author of Overdressed: Barthes, Darwin and Clothes that Speak. Contact: Department of Art History and Film Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia. E-mail: michaelcarter1210@gmail.com Karen de Perthuis teaches in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at the University of Western Sydney. She worked for many years as a costume designer and stylist for the film, television, music and advertising industries, and has published in the areas of cinematic costume design, fashion representation and the fashionable ideal. Contact: School of Humanities and Communication Arts, University of Western Sydney, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith South, NSW 2751, Australia. E-mail: k.deperthuis@uws.edu.au Alison Gill teaches contextual studies to visual design students in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at the University of Western Sydney. Her publications are about sports product advertising, deconstruction fashion, sport shoes, and critical visual strategies to support a more sustainable material culture. Contact: School of Humanities and Communication Arts, University of Western Sydney, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith South, NSW 2751, Australia. E-mail: a.gill@uws.edu.au Prudence Black, Michael Carter, Karen de Perthuis and Alison Gill have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the authors of this work in the format that was submitted to Intellect Ltd. 145 intellect books & journals Performing Arts Visual Arts Film Studies Cultural & Media Studies Intellect books publishers of original thinking | www.intellectbooks.com We are here to support your ideas and get them published. To send us your new book or journal proposal, please download a questionnaire from www.intellectbooks.com. Fashion and War in Popular Culture Edited by Denise N. Rall Aside from the occasional nod to epaulettes or use of camouflage, war and fashion seem to be strange partners. Not so, argue the contributors to this book, who connect military industrial practices as well as military dress to textile and clothing in new ways. For instance, the book includes a series of commentaries on the impact of military dress in the airline industry, in illustrated wartime comics, and even considers today’s muscled soldier’s body as a new type of uniform. Elsewhere, the effects of conquest introduce a new set of postcolonial aesthetics as military and colonial regimes disrupt local textile production and garment making. In another chapter, it is argued that textiles and fashion are important because they reflect a core practice, one that bridges textile artists and designers in an expressive, creative and deeply physical way to matters of cultural significance. And the book concludes by calling the very mode of ‘military chic’ into ethical question. The premier text to illustrate the impact of war on textiles, bodies, costume, art and design, Fashion and War in Popular Culture will be warmly welcomed by scholars of fashion design and theory, historians of fashion and those interested in theories of warfare and military science. Denise N. Rall is an adjunct lecturer at the School of Arts and Social Sciences at Southern Cross University in Australia. ISBN 978-1-84150-751-4 £16, $22.50 170x230mm e-Book available To view our catalogue or order our books and journals visit www.intellectbooks.com Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG. Tel: +44 (0) 117 9589910 Fax: +44 (0) 117 9589911