The Return of the Tighty Whitey!

Newsflash! This is important gays, so pay attention! The tighty whitey is making a full-blown comeback. Well, at least according to the New York Times. Apparently the basic brief died a tragic death four years ago, and now, by the magic of Calvin Klein, it’s going to become a beaming icon of modern simplicity. 

How boring.

Seriously, one of my favorite things about Calvin Klein is that he took men’s underwear out of the mundane and into the amusing. I mean, what would we do on that date night if we didn’t agonize over whether to go with the apricot colored trunks with the metallic logo or the baby blue zebra print?

And boxer prints, well they’re as customizable as greeting cards these days. And yeah, they’re just as hot. GQ even tells me practically every month how to find the right cut to flatter my body. As if they’re jeans or something. 

And speaking of boxers, it’s not just boxers and briefs these days. We’ve got our boxers, briefs ranging from low-rise to hip, the ever popular amalgam of the boxer-brief and it’s not so distant cousin the trunk, and then there’s the shapewear. And we all have Mr. Calvin Klein to thank for it.

Without Calvin Klein we’d have no Andrew Christian or Ginch Gonch (although we probably also wouldn’t have those hideous Ed Hardy designs either). And we definitely wouldn’t have David Beckham’s Armani ad without Marky Mark’s CK ad, which by the way have practically become the gay equivalents of the Farrah Fawcett poster.

So, yeah. Men’s underwear going back to the basics doesn’t really excite me.

In its own way, men’s underwear has been breaking down its own barriers and coming out of its own closet. And much like gay men, there’s a whole spectrum of styles. We’ve all got our preferences (don’t call it a choice!) and if you’re a fan of the tighty whitey, I’m glad there’s a more streamlined, fashionable option for you.

And while vanilla briefs may not be for everybody, they do offer something we all can get excited about … Bikini brief beefcake!

And here some more underwear pics for you to enjoy – strictly in the interest of journalism, of course!