(This posting starts with a charming jockstrap ad, but works into the world of sex between men, so its not suitable for kids or the sexually modest.)
Today’s Daily Jocks ad brings us the very hunky, super-cute, and grinning models Aaron Scott and Adam Scott — yes, they’re twin brothers, and I don’t know which is which — in some PUMP jockstraps from the company’s Play collection:
(#1) Yes, they are wearing fun jocks
(As twins frequently do, they always use their full names in coordination — Aaron Scott and Adam Scott — rather than a reduced coordination — Aaron and Adam Scott — so as to maintain their separate identities.)
Images of very attractive near-naked men always allow a viewer who’s so inclined to project his sexual desires onto the men, but the guys in #1 aren’t adding any fuel of their own to this fire.
It turns out that Adam Scott and Aaron Scott are perfectly happy to present themselves homoerotically (Daily Jocks ads usually have a homoerotic kick to them; #1 is unusual in its sexual innocence.)
So we get the two men, still in their fun jocks, in a steamier pose, with one of them (on the right) performing a heavy cruise face:
(#2)
[Note: about the men and the underwear, on the (very enthusiastic, but rather awkwardy written) Mens UnderwearFan site (Michael Hanes):
Both are fitness models and actors by profession working with Good Talent Management. [They] are posing in the Play men’s underwear from the newest collection by the famous underwear brand PUMP. The underwear of this collection comes with very high-def fiber colors. The colorful stripe on the underwear waistband makes it unique among other variants of men’s underwear.]
Finally, on the Image Amplified site, steamy photography by Blake Ballard featuring the two men; for instance:
(#3) Both performing cock teases, with their jeans pulled down
Three ways of thinking about jockstraps.
— jocks as utilitarian sportswear (supporting and protecting the male genitals during sports or exercise). As exemplified especially by the simplest of Bike jocks, like this vintage item:
(#4) Vintage Bikes of this sort are available on eBay and similar sale sites
As it happens, such items are easily sexualized. Just viewing a vintage Bike jock can produce, for many men, a madeleine-like evocation of the smell of men’s locker rooms, sharp with male sweat — and for many gay men, dick-hardening recollections of fantasized sexual encounters with athletes sporting classic Bike jocks.
— jocks as sexual display (offering the genitals in front and the buttocks in back, both as objects of sexual desire). Daily Jocks ads generally make attractive men in jockstraps available as objects of homoerotic desire, as the viewer wishes; but often the models are visibly projecting sexual desire or desirability — they are in fact cruising the viewer. (Compare #1, presenting attractive men with no sexual agenda, with the steamier #2 and #3.)
— jocks as toys or trinkets, as playful display — fun jocks — though of course such jocks could serve simultaneously as utilitarian athletic wear or as sexual display.
[Note: about sexuality and its performance. The men modeling jocks as sexual display often are “visibly projecting sexual desire or desirability”, as I put it above. These are performances of (gay) sexuality, not expressions of it; the models are acting (many are, in fact, professional actors as well as male models). Some of the models identify as gay or bisexual, but many identify as straight. In particular, despite the homoerotic steaminess of #2 and #3, Aaron Scott and Adam Scott identify as straight — and also serve as objects of desire for a fair number of straight women.
Real life is much more complex. The classification of jockstraps as utilitarian sportswear, sexual display, or toys or trinkets is far too simplistic, even given the provisos above about overlaps and multiple functions. For something more realistic, consider the discussion in my 10/16/19 posting “Adventures in homomasculinity: the pink jock”, beginning:
Following on my postings about butch fagginess in men’s underwear, more intersections of styles of masculinity with styles of homosexuality, still with men’s underwear as signs of these styles.
My talk here is not simply in terms of performances of gay sexuality, but in performances of various styles of homomasculinity, complex patterns of behavior and attitudes, which can then be manifested in complex patterns of self-presentation, like butch fagginess, in which explicit signifiers of butch identity co-occur with others associated with the faggy and the femme — muscle-hunks in pink underwear, for example.
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