(About men’s bodies in very plain terms, and about the fantasy world of steamy male underwear models, and a bit about the social and sexual practices of gay male life, so not for kids or the sexually modest.)
Refections on yesterday’s Daily Jocks ad, officially for a Varsity mesh shoulder harness for men, but also featuring a mesh trunk — and a sexual gesture involving that trunk, which together with the model’s facial expression frames the scene as a fantasy of cruising for sex (between men).
The gesture skirts the line between covering the genitals and revealing them and also, independently, the line between protecting the genitals and fondling them, so it involves us in the question of what is permissible for display in various social contexts (in particular, in WordPress blogs like this one); the central photo might well be over the line in WP, so it appears here with the details of the gesture fuzzed over (though it’s reproduced unaltered in an AZBlogX posting “Skirting the lines” accompanying this one, along with another problematic photo and three unquestionably WP-unsuitable images).
The central photo, with a fuzzy hand:
(#1) A hand plunged down into his underwear, fondling his cock — either jacking off for his own pleasure or offering his dick to the viewer (details, including the dickhead between his thumb and forefinger, visible on AZBlogX)
He’s an underwear model, so he’s shirtless and extravagantly fit. But there’s also the gesture, and his intense facial expression, neither of which is standard issue for models. Taken together, they cry out: cruising for sex. (There’s a lot to be said about cruising for mansex and the conventions of its many forms, but there’s a brief overview in my 7/19/18 posting “Get your cruise face on”.)
Concealing and revealing: opacity vs. visibility. We’re dealing with meshwear here, so there are issues. With underwear made from opaque fabric, almost anything goes, no matter how remarkably moose-knuckly. Such images, of dicks and balls wrapped — whether negligently, ostentatiously, aggressively, or reverentially — in cloth, are permissible in a wide range of on-line contexts meant for the general public. There they are perceived as on the raunchy side, by some observers as indecent, even offensive, but (like naked buttocks) not strictly speaking obscene. Here’s a DJ ad for PUMP! underwear, which regularly goes to the moose-knuckle limit:
(#2) See me, feel me, touch me … Gazing at you, I get the heat
Visible flesh, on the other hand, is over the revelation line. I was surprised that the DJ ad wasn’t labeled as NSFW; maybe the DJ staff thought the dickhead was too small and obscure to merit a warning. But my eyes picked it out almost immediately: they went, as always, first to the model’s face; then to his chest (the intended focus of the ad, on the harness and the pecs it frames), and then right to the gold, the man’s cock in his hand.
Over the line. Only a few days before this ad, DJ produced a remarkably hot ad that the company rightly labeled NSFW: no genital reveal, but way over the fondling line:
(#3) From my 9/24 posting “In the cowboys’ locker room”, photo #3: a DJ Locker Gear ad, labeled NSFW, with one (naked) model plunging his hand into another model’s open-front jockstrap and fondling his (not visible) genitals
There are underwear ads with flagrant self-fondling, but not many of them; here are two:
(#4) From my 2/27/15 posting “Color and advertising your preference”: #2 the Andrew Christian C-Ring Brief Jock (with the model also concealing his cock with his hand)
(#5) From my 2/13/17 posting “VDay hands in pants”
Mostly, the models’ hands are otherwise occupied — one or both of them are up in the air as part of a pitsntits presentation, or down doing a pants-lowering tease. And then of course a lot of the models are just doing straightforward fashion poses.
Underwear ads occasionally tease the viewer by having a model conceal his genitals by covering them with a hand. But since the poses are static, they can always be interpreted as fondling in progress. So these presentations come close to the line. Two examples:
(#6) From my 5/1/10 posting “DEFINE “SCRIMMAGE T-SHIRT””: a 10percent crop top, with the model covering/fondling crotch
(#7) From my 12/3/15 posting “José Parra”: #4 the N2N C Strap
But there are also plenty of underwear ads that are way over the reveal line (these are segregated on sites behind warnings). The subtler of these employ mesh underwear, as in #3 the Pulse Mesh Sock (sheer mesh) and #4 the Mesh Jock (coarse mesh) in my AZBlogX posting. Others are designed to flaunt cocks (and often balls as well) as much as possible, as in #5 the Male Power Master Trunk on AZBlogX. Some postings about such flagrantly revealing garments:
on 6/14/11 in “Today’s remarkable underwear”
on 3/15/13 in “Remarkable underwear update”
on 4/5/13 in “Maximum exposure: Good Devil”
on 4/5/13 in “Maximum exposure: Male Power”
October 11, 2019 at 6:31 pm |
[…] Zwicky looks at how underwear ads can be quite […]